To: contact@justice4victims.org
Subject: We want to arrange charity Krav Maga events
Date: Thur, 1 October 2009
Dear justice4victims.org
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you by email, but I believe that I may be able to make a small contribution to helping prevent further fatal knife and gun attacks on young people in our country.
I am a 32 year old company director living in Birmingham, with my husband and our 11 year old daughter. My husband and I have a successful business that we have been running together for the last 6 years. We feel that we are in a position to try and help your cause and see if we can help make a difference.
I have just returned from spending 12 days in Israel. My husband and I were watching a TV programme on the various martial arts from around the world. They showed a segment on a martial art style used by the Israeli military called Krav Maga. They stressed in the programme, that no special skills were required (ie a martial arts background) and anyone of any size, build, etc could defend themselves with the techniques they use. After watching the programme my husband got straight on the internet looking for classes we could take in the UK. He became very frustrated that none of the schools we contacted had answered their phones, replied to messages or replied to emails, he said to me shall we just find a teacher in Israel and learn the basics there. That is exactly what we did and 2 days later we were on a plane heading to Israel for personal training with one of worlds highest degree experts in Krav Maga.
I am not a physical person, I am 5ft and weigh around 7 stone. I was completely unaware of what to expect, and I secretly thought I was going to spend the 12 days sitting on the sidelines watching my husband, as I would not be physically strong enough. How wrong was I! My husband and I have learnt techniques to defend and protect ourselves against knife and gun threats. What I learnt in first few hours of training, has given me the confidence, that I could defend and escape from knife and gun attack situations safely and successfully. I had 17 stone men attack me with knives and guns at full force and was able to disarm them and escape successfully. There was no concessions made for my sex or size. To say the least I was amazed, as was my husband.
We spent many hours whilst we were in Israel viewing CCTV footage on YouTube of knife and gun attacks that have happened in the UK. Some of these attacks proved to be fatal. We showed many of the clips to our instructor and for each one we showed him, he reconstructed the attack and demonstrated to us simple defences and escapes for each attack. Please don’t misunderstand me I am not saying I have found a skill that will make people invincible, but I truly believe I have found a skill/technique that can help save lives and stop future attacks becoming fatalities.
We spent the 5 hour duration of our flight home discussing what we had learnt and what our instructor had shown us when he reconstructed the CCTV footage from YouTube. It made us realise that many of the children that have died could still be alive today if they knew some basic techniques, they may of still been injured or in need of hospital treatment, but injuries sustained would have been superficial and non life threatening.
We have returned back to the UK in a state of shock that this method of self defence is not widely available and it is not being promoted to help protect our children. Don’t get me wrong, there are Krav Maga classes available here in the UK, but most classes are expensive (£10 to £25 per hour) and in the current economic climate many parents and young people cannot afford these additional costs in their weekly or monthly budgets.
When we landed I brought a copy of The Mirror and on a double page spread there is a feature on the anniversary of the Mirror's Anti Knife Crime March. Upon reading the feature my husband and I have decided to fly our instructor over from Israel, so that some of the young people in our country can learn some of what my husband and I have learnt over the last few days. We want to arrange for as many 2 to 3 hour seminars that we can fit in over however many days he is available for, in as many locations across the country that is logistically possible. Depending on venue sizes and the interest in attending, each seminar would ideally accommodate no more than 30 to 40 people, so not to take away any attention from the instructor to the young people attending.
We are funding his travel and seminar fees ourselves. What we are asking you for is help with obtaining suitable venues, promoting the seminars and getting the children and young people to give us a few hours of their time to attend and learn something that could possibly save their lives.
I am sending this email out to as many people, charities, campaigns and affected families as I can possibly think of. I would greatly appreciate any help you feel you or your organisation would be able to offer my husband and myself in getting this arranged.
We are returning to Israel in the next couple of weeks to start the ball rolling, as our instructor is leaving for the USA at the end of October for 6 weeks to hold training seminars in Krav Maga at martial art schools, police departments, universities, youth groups and correctional facilities across the USA and Canada.
Any help or advice you are able to offer would be greatly appreciated.
For further details please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank for taking the time to read my email.
Penny Russell
Birmingham
justice4victims.org