FC United - Making it Work

One of the highlights of this year’s community work has been the Banardo’s Making it Work project which supports careleavers who are neither in employment nor in education. Together with Barnardo’s, FC United’s community team have developed a course that engages and develops the young people that the project works with. The course we put together was based on the Sports Leaders Day Certificate which is a qualification in general sports coaching. We also arranged volunteering placements for the young people on our various playschemes and after-school clubs across the city so that the young people could get some hands on experience to go with their qualification. Furthermore, the young people have regularly taken part in community cohesion tournaments and attended FC United home games over the last season.

We recently conducted an evaluation of the project, involving questionnaires and interviews with the participants and would like to share the feedback that the young people gave to us. Through the questionnaires we found out that all of the participants felt that the course had helped them to stay fit and healthy and to make more friends. 100% of the young people either agreed or strongly agreed that the course had made it more likely that they would be able to go onto the job or further study that they wanted too and that the course had made it more likely that they would carry out voluntary work in their own community.

The interviews also yielded a number of positive comments about the course, when asked what they had enjoyed about the course the participants gave the following responses –

‘I like the stuff you do, the activities, the way you put it across, it makes you understand better’

‘I bet they all agree with me, it’s when we go out for the matches’

‘yeah taking us out for the matches, that’s good that, no one else would do it’

‘we’ve met people and all that stuff’

‘the football experience, I love playing football and making friends’

We also asked participants about their favourite experiences from carrying out voluntary work-

‘it’s funny seeing the kids enjoy themselves, they like the way you do the activities, they like FC United at the moment, don’t they, the kids’

‘the way that they (the kids) all listened... and the way they all got involved’

‘Just helping people, and being there to help people, get’s me out the house doing something good for the community’

The Young people also talked about what they had learned from taking part in the community cohesion tournaments –

‘developed better as a team from when we first started, when we first started no one really got along but we all get along now’

‘we’ve learned how to play as a team’

As this feedback indicates the Making it Work project has been a great success this year and we look forward to continuing it over the coming year. FC United’s Community & Education Manager, Robin Pye commented: “We are very grateful to Barnardo’s for giving us the opportunity to develop this programme. We now have a model we can deliver to any group of disengaged young people based on making young people feel involved through football training sessions and match visits and then giving them more self-confidence as sports coaches with volunteering experience behind them. As an engagement tool for young people that is hard to beat.???