London Leadership Camp

The London FA hosted their first ever Leadership Camp for all the young volunteers to come together meet each other and learn new skills to be put into place across the capital. The day was hosted at the Soccer Dome, and had a fairly good turn out. The themes of the day were Coaching, Refereeing and Blind Football; all run as separate sessions run by experienced people from each field.

The day began by meeting everyone which was really interesting to share experiences and help everyone make improvements, followed by a heated discussion on the best 11 from the Premiership sides for this season (this provoked immense debate!!) We then had a coaching session in which we all planned drills to work on different aspects of the game, it was great to learn some new ones!

Unfortunately, I had to leave early but the other young leaders said the refereeing was interesting and allowed each of them to try it out to decide whether it was for them. The blind football session also sounded like a great learning experience for all involved!

I'm looking forward to putting these skills into action!!

Young Leaders meeting

The March meeting for the young leaders council took place in the very grand location pictured right- very fancy! It was a good meeting, that was very productive yet again, the attendance has been ok but we are going to strive to achieve a higher turn-out next time! 

If you read my previous post, you will know we carried out a survey and found that there were a lack of events going on for low skill level players as well as girls-we decided to host an event for one of these groups. After much discussion we settled on organising an event for girls. We are currently aiming to run a five-a-side tournament for 14-15 year old girls, on the 13th of July at the London Soccer Dome -keep your eyes peeled for more event information nearer the time. To fund the event, we are going to apply to the FA national youth council for funding- we also welcome David the representive for London too our team, I'm sure he will be a great addition! 

Another event in the pipeline is the Champions League festival events happening in Stratford running alongside the finals at Wembley- this is a great event, free for anyone to attend and I can't wait to volunteer at this one!! I've included the artists impression- if its anything like this its going to brilliant! 

Finally please follow me on twitter 

@ella_cafc 

and the youth council 

@lfa_ylc

The Future of Football

The long awaited Football Futures newsletter has been successfully launched after an online vote decided on the title "The Future of Football" the newsletter includes interviews, updates, upcoming opportunities and the following article on the Young Leaders Council:


Football Futures has now set up the London FA Young Leaders Council which aims to “Represent young people in London football" the council has a variety of members from a range of boroughs in the capital and we aim to stand for all young people aged 14-24. We are a lively and dedicated group coming from all angles of
football involvement.

We have decided that the main focus of our work will be on promoting London Football whilst also trying to enhance the recruitment of volunteers. We all really hope that the council becomes an integral part of the way the FA consults on youth football.Our first job was to find out what the people we represent actually felt about the way football was being run, thank you to everyone who filled out the survey, and if you didn’t get a chance this time there will be plenty more opportunities to have your say. We were really happy with the survey and had a 25% female participation level which was higher than expected. We reached the majority of London boroughs with our survey and a whole
range of age groups. 

We thoroughly studied the survey and have categorised the main areas where improvement is required
are:
- Facilities
- Cost
- Opportunities
for young females
- A need for more information on teams
- The culture surrounding the game e.g.
promoting positive experiences.
The council have decided to come up with a project focusing on these areas.
Keep your eyes peeled for more information on that soon...

Lastly, please all follow us on twitter: @LFA_YLC

Survey- Youth Council

The Youth council had a very productive and interesting second meeting where we analysed the data from our survey, we were happy with the 25% returns from females which was much higher than we were expecting and could of hoped for! We got a real spread of results from across all the boroughs in London (my own borough Greenwich being the highest!) and in age groups.

We thoroughly studied the survey and have categorised the main areas where improvement is required as

-Facilities

-Cost

-Opportunities for young females

-A need for more information on teams

-The culture surrounding the game e.g. bad experiences 

Watch out for updates as we have decided to run a project on one of these areas as our next task! 

Newsletter update

The newsletter is coming together: we have now decided on how we are going to set out the volunteering profile, and with what questions. We have also, perhaps more importantly, decided who will be our first volunteer to be featured- although you will have to wait till its published to find out!

I am currently putting together an article to explain the Young Leaders Council to explain 

-Who we are?

-Our aims

-Recent work

-The results of our survey

There is a young leaders council meeting next week, so we will run through some names for the newsletter then- Fingers crossed if everything runs to plan we should be publishing the newsletter in about a month- so watch this space!

Newsletter

The Football Futures programme has decided to launch a newsletter! This will go to everyone who takes part or is connected to the programme and will be available to download from the London FA website. The newsletter aims to help promote the work we do, and keep the Young Leaders informed through-out the year about all the great opportunities that will be coming up! The newsletter will contain content from young leaders so that it is interesting!

Having said I would help the FA put it together I went to planning meeting: it was really productive and we drafted some ideas for key articles and decided on a format for the newsletter. It will be a quarterly newsletter and each time will contain
-Upcoming opportunities
-Volunteer profile
-Youth council update
-News
-And more!

We are still working on a name though, so any ideas? Hopefully the first edition will be launched on the 1st March- keep your eyes peeled! We will be looking to keep the news relevant and interesting, and I really hope the newsletter is a success, now to decide on a colour scheme...

Update!

The football futures programme has had a great year being relaunched and growing in size. There have been some great experiences such as the media workshop and from earlier in the year pioneers day. I hope the programme continues to grow and I can take put in some great volunteering next year! The FA have also started to send out rewards and certificates for reaching certain volunteering milestones which are great as incentives but also to reward everyone's hard work. I have completed 120 hours now with the FA since joining the programme which is fantastic!

2012 also saw the formation of a young leaders council, which is going to be a great platform to promote improvements in the game for young people. Unfortunately, this months Young Leaders Council had to be cancelled due to problems with the venue but don't worry we will have another meeting in January! The survey the council put together had been really well received, thanks to everyone who promoted it or filled it in. I cant wait to look through all the responses, and we will release the results in the near future!

 All that's left to do is wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a Great New Year!!