On 23rd April, Watford FC’s Community Sport and Education Trust brought together young people from four secondary schools, to celebrate their completion of the Premier League Inspires programme. The group, inclusive of pupils from Bushey Meads, Parmiters, The Reach Free, and Rickmansworth, were joined by Watford FC stars to recognise all the hard work and resilience the young people showed throughout the school term.
PL Inspires empowers participants to develop personal, social, employability and life skills, through a series of regular face-to-face group sessions, mentoring, workshops and social-action projects. This provides pupils with the help they need now, whilst also supporting them to plan for their future. This programme is funded by the Premier League and the Professional Footballer’s Association (PFA), with the Trust’s local delivery supported by TJX Foundation.
During the celebration event at Vicarage Road Stadium, young people’s learning continued with workshops on public speaking and debating, as well as looking at how they could create their own success stories out of the challenges they have already faced. These activities were supported by the organisation Loudspeaker. This was followed by a tour of the Stadium, and meeting Watford FC players Giorgi Chakvetadze and Mileta Rajovic. Pupils used their newly learnt skills to grill the pair, before having the chance to meet them and pose for photos.
The Trust’s Youth Engagement Officer, Jessica Doran, said:
“We are really proud of all our PL Inspires students from this term and hope they can take the skills they learnt from the sessions forward into the future. The Celebration event was great fun, and well deserved by all the pupils that attended.”
After the event, teachers got in touch with the Trust with very positive feedback, including:
“Overall a truly inspiring day and I know all of the students left the event with memories they will cherish.”
“A key message from the day was ‘We are all amazing’ as the pupils had discussed challenges they had faced and had overcome, how they had learnt from setbacks, and that you should always celebrate successes.”
“Thank you so much for today, I delivered very excited students back to school. I asked the pupils when we returned to give me words to express how they felt today was, the words they used were; Passion, Given a Vision, Fun, Entertaining, and Rememberable.”
For more information on Premier League Inspires, visit the programme’s webpage, or email Jess at Jessica.Doran@watfordfc.com
