Asda has announced a new partnership to help combat knife crime.
A pilot with the Sheffield Park Academy school will include a campaign at eight of its stores in the South Yorkshire city.
The Safer Together: #AskNik campaign encourages young people to seek assistance discreetly in local businesses in Sheffield if they do not feel safe.
The #AskNik team works with local primary schools during community cohesion sessions to make keychains that pupils can then use if they need to use the codeword in a store.
The safety keychain contains a torch, a whistle, and a tag that stores a phone number of a trusted adult.
If a young person does not feel safe, they can enter a participating nearby Asda store and ‘ask for Nik’.
Store colleagues will then offer support before contacting their trusted adult.
Students from Sheffield Park presented the campaign to representatives from Asda as part of their annual Next Gen Leaders school programme.
They were inspired to launch it after witnessing knife crime first-hand, with participating Asda stores now displaying signage to indicate they are supporting the campaign.
“The Ask for Nik campaign is an initiative that really resonated with us at Asda when the fantastic team at Sheffield Park presented it to back to us,” said Asda early careers programme manager Lyndsay Holland.
“As soon as we heard the personal experiences of the young people involved with this campaign, we knew we had to get involved and play our part.
“We recognise how important campaigns like this can be and the significant role Asda can play in tackling this important issue. By rolling this out in our stores, we can make sure this campaign reaches even more local communities, so that more young people can feel safe.”
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