Season › 2013-14 › News Sylvain Lends A Hand To Cook Up A Storm , 22 November, 0comments | Jump to most recent Young people from Everton in the Community's award-winning Safe Hands initiative received a special visit from Sylvain Distin recently. The French defender donned an apron to take part in a cookery session at Finch Farm and answered questions from youngsters about his diet, favourite food and even his own cooking ability! The scheme, which recently took the top prize for the ‘Community Initiative of the Year' at the North West Football Awards, helps to integrate young offenders back into the community by equipping them with qualifications and life skills, including culinary expertise to ensure they can eat healthily and affordably. The cookery lessons are part of a rehabilitation programme of further education and training, which is aimed at preventing participants from re-offending and ultimately improve their life chances. The Frenchman said: “It's important for us to give something back to the community, and I really enjoyed meeting the youngsters. “I love the idea of the scheme, I strongly believe that it's important to offer young people a second chance and to show them that crime isn't the way to go. “It's important for them to know about the benefits of eating healthily and living a good lifestyle, so hopefully I taught them a few things.” Safe Hands, funded by the Big Lottery Fund ‘Youth in Focus' programme, will support 150 individuals, aged 15-21, over the next five years to help get them back on their feet and into training, employment or further education, and to prevent them from re-offending. Since its launch the programme has achieved a 76 percent non re-offending rate among participants compared to the national figure of 26 percent of young offenders who are released from custody within 12 months. The programme has initially been set a target to prevent 52 per cent of participants re-offending within 12 months of release and if the scheme continues at its current rate it will save the taxpayer £52million. Safe Hands' unique approach to supporting young offenders is attracting much attention, including interest from the Ministry of Justice. An overwhelming 80 percent of the young people on the programme have demonstrated a measurable increase in confidence, self-esteem and optimism about their future, with 83 percent achieving a range of accredited qualifications, allowing them to venture back into education, training or employment. Article continues below video content About these ads © ToffeeWeb