A joint partnership initiative between the Guernsey Football Association and Ravenscroft, which aims to development football volunteers and coaches of the future, continues to engage and encourage more of Guernsey’s young people to give time back to the sport.

The FA Junior Football Leaders Award is part of the Ravenscroft-sponsored Football for Everyone programme to develop and expand youth football in Guernsey. The award was designed and introduced to show young people that there are many other ways to get involved in the sport apart from physically playing. In the first year of the programme, 27 young people completed the training course and a number of those have since used those skills they have acquired to support the local football community in various ways. The 2017/18 academic year has so far seen another 31 young people complete the training course with one course being delivered to 16 Year 10 students at La Mare De Carteret High School and another course being made available to children from all local schools, which was attended by a further 15 students. In addition to this, the course will be delivered in Alderney for the first time on Sunday the 19th of August.

The course itself, which has been delivered by Guernsey FA Football Development Officer, Angus Mackay, includes 6 hours of practical learning with the students then required to complete 4 hours of volunteering to gain the full qualification. The volunteering hours can be achieved by helping with a team, running football activity sessions, refereeing or organising and managing events and Mackay commented that:

‘It has been great to see some of the students who completed the course in the first year using their skills and giving up their time to give back to local football. This is the basis of the ‘Football for Everyone’ campaign, which is aimed at growing the sport locally in a variety of ways and delivering the Junior Football Leaders Award is an important element in developing more volunteers to ensure the sport us sustainable. I am now looking forward to seeing the 31 students from the current academic year do exactly the same and the GFA is here to support and guide these young people with their volunteering. We recognise that football is the same as other sports in that it needs volunteers and we want the younger generation to understand how important it is to give something back,’

‘We have already begun planning our delivery programme for the next academic year and the schools continue to be really positive about the course. We are again planning to deliver the Award in every school so that we see more and more young people getting involved both on and off the pitch.’

For more information about the Junior Football Leaders Award, or how to get involved as a volunteer in local football, please contact Guernsey FA Football Development Officer, Angus Mackay:

Email – Angus.mackay@guernseyfa.com

Tel – 01481 200443