Youth-focused forum aims to empower young women
Six Premier League (PL) and English Football League (EFL) clubs have come together to empower young women and girls by creating a Youth voice forum that aims to give the young people of today the chance to shape community-focused activity in their local area.
The Female Ambassador Forum was piloted during the COVID-19 lockdown as part of the Premier League Kicks programme. PL Kicks was launched 14-years ago and has a long history of using the power of football and the value of sports participation, to help youngsters in some of the most high-need areas of England and Wales.
The programme aims to engage young people in regular positive and fun experiences in safe and supportive community environments. Involving young people in the design and delivery of future activities and supporting them to create positive change, enables Club Community Organisations (CCOs) to develop future social action opportunities across PL Kicks.
The first session saw young representatives aged 14-18 years who had previously attend PL Kicks from; Arsenal in the Community, Bournemouth AFC Community Sports Trust, Fulham FC Foundation, Palace for Life Foundation, Saints Foundation and Watford Community Sports & Education Trust.
This platform created for young people provides a space for them to express their challenges and share solutions to tackle issues faced across sport and society and stimulate positive and proactive change.
Fulham FC Foundation participants quotes:
Keira: “I thought the Female Voice Forum was a good experience for us girls to get our opinions across and to potentially ‘have a voice.’ I think it was nice to see the difference in session between us and the other Kicks teams and gave us ideas on things we can do in the future to make our sessions better and to attract other participants. It’s definitely something I’d take part in again in the future.”
Mia: “I enjoyed the experience with the Female Voice Forum because it was really fun and interesting, also I would definitely like to do it again. Learning from other coaches and other teams was really interesting to me. In the future I want to do coaching so it was great to learn from.”
The young people will be consulted on topics such as the best environment to host football as well as, identifying a diverse range of activities that may encourage girls and young women to take part and how best to market to a young audience in various mediums.
The Forum has added great value for those CCOs involved as they start to learn more about the experiences of local young people and strive to continue to build stronger, safer and more inclusive communities.
Sam Hadley, FFCF Female Football Development Officer, said: “The Female Voice Forum gave a very good insight as to how we at Fulham FC Foundation can engage and increase the number of females participating in our Kicks sessions. At Fulham FC Foundation, we are striving to increase the number of females who are taking part in our activities, and this was as great stepping stone to finding out directly from the young people how we can achieve this goal.”
As well as virtual youth voice sessions, a celebration event is planned for May 2021, which the young ambassadors will take a lead role in planning and delivering.
For more information contact email shadley@fulhamfc.com
Find out more about Premier League Kicks: premierleague.com/communities/