A former gang member is being recognised in the New Year Honours List after turning his life around and starting his own boxing classes to steer other young people away from crime.

Stephen Addison has been awarded the British Empire Medal out of recognition for the difference his organisation, Box Up Crime, is making to youngsters in East London. 

Box Up Crime gives boxing lessons to around 600 young people in schools, pupil referral units and community centres in the borough of Barking and Dagenham, but Addison has plans to expand, the BBC reports. 

In addition to teaching boxing, students are mentored and taught life skills like self-discipline. 

Addison was inspired to start the programme after being left shocked by a 'random' bad dream one night in which he saw himself being sent to prison for murder. 

The dream prompted him to turn his back on his gang, return to his parents' church and start university.  It was while studying business at South Bank University in London that he rediscovered his childhood love for boxing - a love he says he abandoned at 15 when he got into gangs.  

The project took off when he wrote about starting a boxing academy for his dissertation.  The university got behind the idea and offered enough funding for Addison to take on around 100 young people in August 2013. 

Since then, he has worked with over 4,000 young people.  They include students at his former school, Barking Abbey, which he had been forced to leave in his teen years due to bad behaviour. 

He is motivated by his own life story to help troubled youngsters find a sense of purpose for their lives through boxing. 

'I want to see those dirty diamonds shine again,' he said. 

He continued: 'They just need someone to believe in them, motivate them.

'Young people can look at me and look at my life and say, "Stephen was involved in gangs... Stephen was involved in all this messed-up stuff just like me but he's been able to turn it around and and I can do the same thing."'