ELIZA Rebeiro's decision, after a close friend was stabbed, to launch a campaign seven years ago warning children about the dangers of knife crime hit the headlines.
Today, that work continues to play a major role in the day-to-day operation of the charity she established, Lives not Knives (LNK).
But Eliza and her mother, Monique, who head up the operation together, have helped it evolve into what is now a driving force behind getting young people into jobs.
The charity continues to work in around 120 schools, mainly in Croydon, sending out its own youth workers to spread its preventative message about knife crime and gang culture.
Some of those young people are on apprenticeships at LNK, with the intention of becoming fully-trained youth workers.
That scheme has been part of the inspiration behind the decision to tackle the problem of youth unemployment in Croydon head-on.
Monique said: "We haven't changed direction. I think we have grown, mainly through the young people we have been working with."
That continuing contact with young people has pinpointed, she said, the need for more work to be done to prepare young people for the employment.
Monique said: "One of the things we have identified is that many of these young people don't have qualifications.
"There is a feeling that, if they haven't got GCSEs, that's it, and they can go through despair because they feel they have lost out on life."
Part of LNK's mission is to help prove to those young people that this does not have to be the case, by working with Jobcentre Plus to offer a six-week work training programme.
That programme covers the basics; from preparing a CV and being able to present themselves to employers, to identifying their skills and learning how to build upon them.
Monique said: "We are teaching them to forget about the past.
"We get them to think about their skills and what they want to be.
"It is all about confidence building."
It was also important, she said, that they had the ability to find out what skills employers were looking for when they advertise jobs and how they could respond to those demands.
The training courses offered by LNK are being recognised more widely and relationships with businesses across the borough are growing.
Monique said: "Because we have been doing this work for a long time, companies are now coming to us."
She said employers can be confident that young people who have been trained through LNK will be job ready, whether as an apprentice or a full-time member of staff.
Monique added: "Where there are job opportunities we want to make sure that our young people in Croydon are able to take advantage of those opportunities.
"The alternative is that the jobs will go outside the borough and nobody wants that."
LNK's undoubted success has also been helped by the fact the charity is working from large premises offered to it by the Westfield/Hammerson Partnership at the Centrale shopping centre. The unit is big enough for LNK to run training courses, provide a place where young people can meet, and also space to allow start-up businesses to test the market. Monique said: "We are feeling very positive about the future.
"We will work with anybody to achieve our aims and I think that is a winning formula."
