Forty-two student leaders converged on the FA’s headquarters at Soho Square last Thursday to celebrate their outstanding achievements in volunteering.

 

To cap the occasion the students, from five Further Education colleges across the country, were presented with their well earned certificates of achievement by The FA’s Director of Football Development, Sir Trevor Brooking.

 

The Students hailing from Sutton Coldfield College, South Nottingham College, South Devon College, Telford College and Cornwall College Camborne, took part in the nationwide “Step into Sport” pilot scheme, run by British Colleges Sport in partnership with the FA.

 

The programme aims to help young people “to be the best leader, coach, referee or administrator they can be”’, enhancing the skills of those young people who are interested not only in playing the game but putting something back in to the game.

 

As part of the programme the selected students completed up 50 hours of volunteer work across four activity themes: 

  1. Assisting in coaching and fun activities for young people
  2. Behind the scenes - Running the Football Club / School/Organisation
  3. Marketing and Promotion
  4. Officiating – Running the Game 

Their volunteering hours were instrumental in supporting local community football initiatives ranging from holiday courses, festivals for disabled students, officiating of games and delivering football to deprived townships in South Africa.

 

The students were accompanied to Soho Square by their college lecturers including Rob Williams from Sutton Coldfield College who spoke about how increasing voluntary activity, particularly among sports students, has improved their career prospects and employability.

 

Martin Scanlon, who works for Unite The Union, the sponsor of The Balls To Poverty project also spoke about how ten students from South Nottingham College’s Football Performance Programme had all completed 25 hours coaching in UK and South Africa as part of the Balls To Poverty project in townships.

 

Following on from the presentation of certificates, Sir Trevor Brooking explained the positive impact that young volunteers have on developing the national game and spoke about the FA’s new age appropriate courses that are being launched.

 

Karl Lines, British Colleges Sport Football Development Manager, also outlined some of the key targets for 2008-09 around volunteering in FE as part of the FA’s four year national game strategy. These include working with over 300 student leaders in FE Colleges per year as part of the expanding Step into Sport leadership and volunteering programme. Also highlighted was the proposed development of a referee specific Step into Sport programme to develop new students each year to be deployed as referees, and the introduction of a bursary scheme in Focus Colleges to support students to pursue FA qualifications.

 

For more information on student volunteering in colleges or if you are a college who would like to register an interest in getting involved in next year’s programme, please contact Karl Lines at Karl.Lines@britishcollegessport.org