Chelsea FC Women’s defender Anita Asante recently joined pupils from Cobham Free School to help launch the Premier League Writing Stars programme.
The Premier League Writing Stars poetry competition returns for its second year to inspire children aged five to 11 to get creative and pen their own poem on the theme of diversity.
The campaign, which is open to all primary schools in England and Wales, is supported by stars from the worlds of football, entertainment and literature with last year’s competition encouraging more than 25,000 primary school pupils to write a poem.
Asante listened to the children’s poems that they had been working on during the session before taking part in a Q&A session.
Speaking after the event, she said: ‘I’ve really enjoyed meeting the children today and talking to them about diversity, not just within football but all walks of life.
‘It’s great to see the Foundation and Premier League doing these initiatives to help the younger generation understand that we are all different in our own way, but those differences also bring us together.’
Chelsea Foundation schools education manager said: ‘We’ve had Anita come in to help us launch this year’s poetry competition as part of the Premier League Writing Stars programme.
‘It was great to hear her talk to the children about her experiences throughout her career and I think the children thoroughly enjoyed having her with us.
‘She also gave some great tips on writing poetry, how important it is to bring your personality through your writing and so hopefully the children can take that away to help them produce their own poem.’
Chelsea FC Foundation recently joined forces with youth homeless charity Centrepoint to help inspire positive change for people experiencing homelessness and social exclusion.
Centrepoint is the UK’s leading charity for homeless young people and provide accommodation, health support and life skills to get them back into education, training and employment.
Together with Centrepoint, the Foundation helped to provide workshops and practical sessions to participants over a course of eight weeks with the main focus on both health and wellbeing and employability.
The workshops consisted of key themes including respect, resilience, responsibility and teamwork while participants also got to take part in a practical session at our Cobham Training Ground.
Chelsea Foundation London community manager Gareth Davies said: ‘Our initial training programme with Centrepoint has been a great success and we are very much looking forward to growing our relationship to positively influence the lives of these young people through self-development workshop delivery and practical football coaching.
Jack Badu of Centrepoint said: “This was a great opportunity to offer young people a chance to express themselves through the medium of street football in one of the most inspiring football spaces in the world. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with Chelsea Staff on this and I hope this is the first of many groups moving forward.”
The Chelsea Foundation hosted a disability awareness event at Coombe Boys School in New Malden on Thursday.
As part of the school’s Diversity Day, more than 360 children from Coombe Boys School and Coombe Girls School took part in a fun-filled day of sporting activities.
The students took part in activities including blind football and learnt how to modify sessions for people with disabilities.
Chelsea Foundation disability coordinator Ellie Crabb said: ‘We’ve been hosting a disability awareness event as part of the school’s Diversity Day so we’ve been looking at blind football and we have also been looking at the differentiation of sessions for children with disabilities.
‘We hope the children will gain an understanding of what it’s like for someone who has a disability and hopefully from that they’ll be able to educate others and to support others learning and to understand about that overall aspect of inclusion.
‘These type of events are really important because the majority of children in schools are getting diagnosed with disabilities earlier.
‘These students are in year nine and some of them may have a disability and some may not know that they have a disability and so it’s really important that they start to understand what kind of person they need to be to work with someone with a disability.’
Year nine student Isabelle said: ‘We’ve been taking part in blind football and learning to trust our partners – and today’s activities has made me grateful for what I actually have.
‘It’s very important that we don’t treat anyone any differently, we should still try and involve anyone with a disability even if they do find it a little bit harder to take part.’