Over 100 Young Leaders selected for Football Futures Camp.
Between 18 and 22 July, 100 Young Leaders from across the Country will descend upon Hereford Royal National College for the Blind for The FA Football Futures Camp 2012.
Every County FA has been asked to nominate their two most promising young leaders (one male, one female), aged 16-19, to attend camp. Nominations have also been received from some of The FA’s Education partners – British Colleges in Sport and Independent Schools FA.
The programme has been designed by a Management Team, made up from young leaders who attended the camp in 2010. Since November, they have attended monthly meetings at Wembley, and were tasked with making many of the key decisions as to how the camp would look and feel. Lewis Ploughman, from Norfolk FA is part of the team, and said: ‘Being part of the Management Team has been an amazing experience.
"It has been challenging, but very rewarding. We all feel like we have been part of something very special, and we really feel like we have had ownership over how we want the camp to be."
The Football Futures programme will launch in September 2011. For information on how you can get involved, please see below.
What is it?
The FA Football Futures Leadership and Volunteering programme aims to recruit, retain, develop, reward and provide a progressive pathway for young leaders in order to develop a skilled football workforce. The young leader is placed at the heart of the Football Futures programme choosing what, where and how they wish to volunteer in football across six football themes. During 2011 over 6000 young people will be provided with an opportunity to get involved in volunteering in football with development of life skills at the core of everything they do.
Who is the programme for?
The *current programme up to September 2011 is available to any young person aged 16+ who has an interest in getting involved in football leadership and volunteering. This can be in a range of environments be it at a school, college attached to a charter standard club or league or other likeminded partner. Young Leaders can choose from a range of activities, from assisting with the coaching or running of a team, acting as the press officer for a junior league, developing a film to promote a new activity for young people to play, refereeing or being a Respect Ambassador to name but a few.
*The new Football Futures strategy will be launched from September 2011.
What are the benefits?
Through Football Futures, a young leader will gain valuable experience and develop skills that can be applied to all walks of life. Once in the programme, Young Leaders will be offered support to gain football related qualifications such as the Level 1 in coaching football or refereeing qualifications. Young Leaders can track their volunteer hours and get rewarded through The County FA, ISFA and British College Sport Football Development programme at the following milestones;
10 Hours
25 Hours
50 Hours
75 Hours
100 Hours
125 Hours
150 Hours
175 Hours
200 Hours
Any Young Leader, who reaches more than 200 hours, can be nominated by their County FA, ISFA or BCS Football Development programme for additional rewards.
Football Futures Themes
Students can choose to volunteer against any of the following themes:
1. Coaching and Working with Teams
Oportunities could include coaching or working with a team in a college, school, Charter Standard Club or The FA club links programme. This can be as small as assisting an experienced coach, to running one-off coaching sessions, to working with a team on a regular basis in training and also on a match days.
2. Refereeing
Refereeing games within club, school or college on a voluntary basis. Young Leaders can get involved in refereeing small –sided games, intra school football or chose to focus on 11v11 football and become part of the National Referee Development programme.
3. Running and Supporting Events
Assisting in the coordination and organisation of an event(s). It can be any kind of event from intra school football to regional/national tournaments.
4. Running and Developing the Game
Assisting in the running of a Charter Standard club or league or an intra school league. This can involve supporting the fixtures secretary, taking minutes at committee meetings or writing development plans to increase participation, etc.
5. Promoting the Game
Many young leaders will probably have already been involved in promoting the game through volunteering activities and not even have realised it! For example, creating a Facebook group for your club, team or league? That is part of promoting the game. Running a website? Writing match reports? Photography? The Promoting the Game strand of the Football Futures programme is designed to cater for these activities.
6. RESPECT Ambassador
Ensuring that all players have signed up to the Respect Codes of Conduct, putting up Respect barriers and ensuring that teams all understand the competition rules and regulations etc. This work to ensure that the club, league, school, college or university’s Respect practices are adhered to is rewarded through the programme.
How do I get involved?
Contact your County FA by clicking here.
Independent Schools – Contact Football Development Officer Sean Smith at
fdo@isfa.org.uk.
