A former professional wrestler who considers Bermuda “one of the best places on the planet” has offered to help the Island overcome its social challenges.World Wrestling Entertainment veteran John Layfield is now in talks with the Family Centre to bring about change.He hopes his relationship with international charity Beyond Sport will come in useful in efforts to clean up neighbourhoods here hit by antisocial behaviour.Mr Layfield, who is known professionally as Bradshaw or JBL, said he was moved to help having spent a great deal of time in Bermuda in recent years.He said he discussed implementing a Beyond Sport flagship programme here, in a recent meeting with Martha Dismont and Peter Carey of the Family Centre.He also raised the subject of how Beyond Sport’s methods could be applied to tackle Bermuda’s gang violence with representatives from the overseas charity.“I’ve worked with Beyond Sport for a number of years,” he said. “We have a global reach to 665 various charities that we help to try and use sport for social change.“In Venezuela, we had an 85 percent success rate getting kids, as well as men, out of gangs by using rugby.”Beyond Sport is described on its website as “a global organisation that promotes, develops and supports the use of sport to create positive social change across the world”.Said Mr Layfield: “I saw the gang violence and wanted to try and get people aware of what’s been working for Beyond Sport. The idea is to bring in Beyond Sport’s resources to people who are already working with families and gang issues here. I’m sure that we could be successful here and I hope we could have something in place by the fall.”He said Beyond Sport could provide consultation resources and help with raising money, without charging the Island for its assistance.Mrs Dismont said the ideas were “just at the discussion phase”.“Sport brings people together and has the potential to teach character lessons that can be applied elsewhere in life. Beyond Sport seems to have the support of great athletes who also have great character, as well as great leaders such as Desmond Tutu.”She said the Family Centre’s interest lay in “character-building and collaboration”.“We would not want to duplicate other people’s sporting efforts but we may have an opportunity to connect the best of sport to youth development in a way that can help with social problems,” Mrs Dismont said.The Family Centre was interested in establishing “positive youth development zones” modelled on the most successful components of other programmes like the Harlem Children’s Zone programme in New York, she added.“Programmes like Beyond Sport are needed when you create a youth development zone. The goal is to achieve a collective impact, by uniting various resources around a shared vision. It has to cater to a community’s needs, ranging from prevention and enrichments, all the way to intervention.“Young people need and deserve to be surrounded by a diverse range of positive opportunities to belong to. That’s what will be required if we want to reverse the negative trends.”The charity has approached stakeholders, including Community Development Minister Michael Weeks, with the idea. Mrs Dismont hopes also to include the Department of Youth and Sport.“We are at the cusp of getting funding for this important new partnership,” she said. “The goal is to bring coordinated, effective resources to the neighbourhoods where they are needed the most. We hope to have achieved concrete steps forward by September.”Mr Layfield based his wrestling persona on his sideline work as a stock market investor. He splits his time between Bermuda and New York, commuting to the city each week to contribute to Fox News’ business programme ‘The Cost of Freedom’.lUseful websites: www.tfc.bm, www.beyondsport.org, www.hcz.org.