As family resemblances go it's some way short of striking.

David Sye's most noticeable physical feature is a heavily tattooed body; with particularly exotic arms. Not much to remind you of Frankie Vaughn, the smooth crooner who was his dad.

But they have one family trait very much in common: they care about stopping violence, especially among the young, and they care(d) about Easterhouse.

It's 40 plus years since the late Vaughn senior came to Glasgow's East End to put his time and his money where his mouth was; staging concerts to fund a community venue, trying to unpick the sterility of the gang culture and rid the area of the menace of knives and other ubiquitous weapons of choice.

David's professional life took a very different route. He suffered as a young man from ulcerated colitis, and took up Tibetan yoga to combat the symptoms. A yoga elder for 25 years, he uses an innovative cross fertilisation of yoga with street music and dance in conflict resolution.

It's taken him from Bosnia, to Palestine and Israel, and, in Britain, to projects in Brixton and work with the Youth at Risk, and Kids Company charities. But Easterhouse runs in his blood, which is why he comes to Glasgow every few months to re-energise the classes now held there under the auspices of Easterhouse Phoenix Development.

It is, if you like, a perfect virtuous circle.

Which brings us to Richard McShane, a local man whose mother moved to Easterhouse from Glasgow's slums in the early sixties and raised seven kids there.

It was when an illness confined him to barracks some years ago, that Richard began to understand the breadth and depth of the social problems on his doorstep – problems, he says, that you don't always see clearly when you're out working most of the day.

One of the things he saw was the frustration of his mum's generation, so he helped set up a club for them. The first night they got 26, then 46, then 70. And they called it the Phoenix Club.

At the other end of the age scale he found a similar lack of social opportunities; young boys in particular having to scale 14 foot fences to have an illicit kickabout in school grounds. And so Phoenix United was born, a local football club which has been so successful that a couple of the youngsters got picked up by Scotland youth teams.

They got games with more established older sides like Baillieston Thistle, which, says Richard, not only toughened up his skinny lads, but gave them mentors as well.

Other sports projects sprang up, not least the chance to use baseball bats for the purpose originally intended. Then there was Dodge Ball and Racket Ball and making cycle trips to the big city with Freewheel North. It's ironic, David tells you, that the West End of Glasgow was only 15 minutes away by bus, but most of these youngsters had never seen it. It might as well have been Mars.

And then there was David Sye and his yogabeat. Since telling your mates you were off to yoga didn't necessarily help your street cred, it sometimes morphed into GYAO, a yoga anagram which also handily functions as an acronym for Give Youth an Opportunity.

At the moment the community activities happen out of a disused library which the lads gutted and refurbished themselves. But the dream is the Phoenix Community and Opportunity Centre, to be built on the site first used by Frankie's earlier crusade. Among the fundraising activities will be a Viennese ball run by some of their supporters in Glasgow next Spring. Viennese balls? Yoga? Easterhouse? You betcha.

The lesson here is that what works, what grows, what lasts in places like Easterhouse is what is organic and nurtured by the folk concerned. A famous local institution, FARE (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse) has been running brilliant self-help projects by locals for locals since the late eighties.

There is a PS to all of this welcome activity; another virtuous circle about to be described. Well over 30 years ago a young ministers cut his parish teeth in Easterhouse. He was Norman Drummond, who went on to found the Columba 1400 charity which takes young people from difficult backgrounds off on leadership courses to centres in Skye and, more recently, Loch Lomond.

Richard McShane thinks that journey, personal as well as geographical, could be another experience to help transform the aspirations of the kids who inhabit the still troubled patch where he grew up, and into which he and his neighbours pour their own own prodigious energies.

Meantime, he claims their communal efforts have dismantled many of the territorial battle lines used by two generations as an excuse for casual violence against interlopers from the "wrong" tribe.

After all if rival gang members are playing in the same footy team it's not really helpful to kick lumps out of your own side.