‘I was adopted and abused. Now I’m teaching young people to repair bicycles so they can know God’s love’

Neil Obbard was an Army sniper filled with anger over his childhood abuse. Seeing the young people on his estate in Leeds suffering with similar traumas, he started a bicycle repair programme with the hope of reaching them with the good news

I live in East Leeds, where the most recent statistics show that a third of young people are living in poverty. Often, it’s difficult to describe what this looks like to others but, on my estate, I know kids aged nine and ten years old who are running drugs for their families.

These young people – who are coping with all kinds of dysfunction and trauma and trying to make sense of it all - find it almost impossible to express themselves in a way that will be heard. Feeling rejected, marginalised and angry, they are easily provoked; they get excluded from school, banned from youth clubs and end up roaming the streets. Fighting for their dignity and respect, they crave acceptance, purpose and an escape from boredom. Police sanctions and school exclusions do little to address these underlying issues and, at worst, only reinforce destructive patterns.