Menu Forum

Meet our founder

Tracey Ford is the founder of JAGS Connect, a charity dedicated to ending youth violence. JAGS was founded in honor of James Andre Godfrey Smartt-Ford, Tracey’s son who was tragically murdered at an ice-skating rink before his 18th birthday. This tragedy spurred Tracey to leave behind a successful mortgage-broking business to create a charity to prevent serious youth violence. Tracey’s journey as a mother coping with grief equipped her with the lived experience and understanding to be able to support families facing similar challenges.

Meet the JAGS team

We are a force educating, leading, and inspiring action to protect our children and expand their horizons through innovative employability programmes. Since its founding, the JAGS team has raised awareness of youth violence, provided empowerment training for women and girls, offered peer support for mothers affected by violence, and most recently, has provided hot meals to communities affected by COVID-19.

Our Values

We create space.

We hold space for diverse voices and different perspectives to come together through love and support. We invite dialogue and collaboration to build lasting change together.

We offer contributions.

We take pride in the way we contribute to our community. We require it of others and ourselves in order to prevent violence and build a better world.

We empower change.

We believe that change is not an end goal, it is a constant action needed to build momentum. We create a circulation motion of change to which our movement has no end.

Shop to support JAGS Connect

You can shop our merchandise here. We believe in wearing our hearts on our sleeves.

View All
Loading component ...

Stand with us and help build a safer world.

You can choose to make a one-off or monthly donation to fund our vital work combating youth violence. Your donations fund our online resources pages, our family forum, our face-to-face consultations, and our community workshops.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date with us.