Youth mentor honoured for work tackling knife crime

A youth worker who has spent more than 20 years supporting young people affected by violence and exploitation has been made an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours.

Michael Phipps, 41, from Levenshulme, Manchester, has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Phipps - one of just over 1,000 people in the UK to be recognised - said he felt "honoured and privileged" to receive the award.

He said: "I am elated that my work for over 20 years as a youth and community worker in Manchester, supporting real people and trying to be a positive role model, has been recognised."

He is the strategic lead for communities at the Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit.

Phipps began as a volunteer youth worker and sports coach while also working as an electrician.

At the age of 25, he went to university to study youth and community work, before going on to manage youth services and design mentoring programmes for young people at risk of criminal exploitation, county lines drug dealing, and knife crime.

Phipps said his work had included supporting young people who had been caught carrying knives or who had been victims of violence.

He said community mentors could help them "on to a more positive pathway".

Phipps said the most rewarding part of the job was still hearing about the difference interventions had made.

He said: "When violence is reduced and young people have made positive changes, that is what makes the work valuable."

He said he was still contacted by people he had supported earlier in his career.

"There is a young person I have been mentoring for a long time who is doing really, really well," he said.

"He always wanted to be a footballer. He has got a job in the sports industry, he is travelling the world coaching football and regularly sends me WhatsApps to keep me up to date with how his career is progressing."

Also recognised was Anjum Malik, 69, from Trafford, who has been made an MBE for services to British South Asian arts.

Malik is a poet, scriptwriter and senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

She began her public service in 1975 as the first British Pakistani woman police officer in the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police Force.

She later became an interpreter and adviser to police forces, government bodies and community organisations, using her Urdu fluency and legal knowledge to support women in closed Asian communities, including those facing violent or forced marriages.

Malik said she was "amazing, emotional and grateful" after finding out she had been honoured.

She said: "I was very emotional. I thought of my mum and dad. Sadly, they are not with us anymore.

"I just wanted them to know because it is always all thanks to them, really, everything I do."

Malik arrived in England from Pakistan with her mother and siblings in 1968, a year after her father had moved to the country.

She said: "I was 12 years old. I remember the moment I walked down the steps from the plane when we arrived in England with my mum and my siblings.

"I was the eldest, so of course I was helping my mum.

"I would never have dreamt that I would be a writer, a lecturer, a police officer and now an MBE holder.

Malik said her father, Abdul Latif Malik, had been an accountant, but struggled to find similar work when he arrived in England.

She said he later worked in a foundry and on the buses, while her mother went on to run a shop in Bradford after he died at the age of 45.

"My mum and dad left countries," Malik said.

"They came here because they wanted their children to be educated in the best place they knew.

"They gave up everything they knew for their children."

Malik has written in Urdu and English and has spent more than 30 years working in poetry, drama and education.

Her work has included more than 80 scripts for the BBC and ITV, poetry films and projects with refugees, migrants and working-class South Asian communities.

She said much of her work had focused on people "who are not normally seen in the mainstream".

"I work with them across the country, but a lot in Manchester and Greater Manchester, where I get them to write their own stories or I write their stories," she said.

Malik said one lockdown project with South Asian women in Rochdale had helped her understand the importance of giving people a voice.

She said: "It really brought home to me how important it was to give people a chance to express themselves."

Wythenshawe-raised Tony Whelan, 73, has been made an MBE for services to football.

Whelan has had a long career in youth football coaching, beginning with Manchester City's Football in the Community programme between 1986 and 1990.

He later joined Manchester United's School of Excellence and academy, where he rose to become assistant academy director.

His work has focused on the development and welfare of young players, with colleagues describing him as a father figure to many boys at the academy.

He is credited with helping develop players including Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Scott McTominay and Anthony Elanga.

Whelan said he was "profoundly honoured, humbled and moved" to be appointed MBE.

He said: "No one receives recognition like this entirely on their own merit."

He said young players had brought him "boundless inspiration, happiness, joy and, above all, fun".

"It has been a lifetime passion to champion talented schoolboys aspiring to pursue a career in professional football," he said.

Whelan said he hoped the award would highlight the importance of youth football and the "devotion, dedication and commitment" of the staff who work within it.

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