Anti-Knife Crime Charity Transforms One Tonne of Knives into Outdoor Fitness Parks Every Month

Steel Warriors was established in 2017 by Ben Wintour and Pia Fontes who were driven by a desire to challenge conventional approaches to knife crime.

They wanted to use the tonne of knife steel collected each month by the police to help young people develop more confidence to walk the streets unarmed, provide a healthy and affordable way to build physical strength, and support individuals in achieving their goals and earning a living.

Speaking to Claira Hermet on What The Health?!, Ben said: "Steel Warriors is a an anti knife crime charity that was founded in 2017 and what we do is we take knives that come off the streets, mainly from the Met, and we melt them down and recycle them into free outdoor gyms for the community."

He continued to say: "So we've now built, we're building our fifth gym at the moment, and we run free training sessions at sport young people and to get them involved, particularly young people affected by youth violence, and get them involved in in training and a new sense of community and hopefully in a positive direction that can ultimately lead to them getting getting work."

Later in the interview he spoke about the amount of steel that they gather: "It's a ton a month that comes in from the Met Police. So London's police alone. And I mean, at this point, we've actually had to ask the police to stop giving us knives simply because we can't afford to store so many of them. We're currently sitting on around 10 tons of knives, and we have a whole bunch of gyms that have been prefabricated." 

He also said: "So, you know, our ambition is to fail in a way, and to kind of run out of nice steel to build with, but it's definitely, you know, I think that insight around the police taking a ton a month was something that really shocked us and, and I think it's a powerful visual metaphor for how, or, you know, significant the problem is."