We are keeping in regular touch with four separate diarists with a connection to the Foundation, a mixture of staff and participants, to catch up with how they are doing and their contacts with Wolves’ official charity.
Today we feature Luke Shearing, Inclusion & Cohesion Officer with the Foundation, who explains what his job involves working with young people across the city.
LUKE’S DIARY
Hello and welcome to my first Foundation diary!
Originally from Bristol, I moved up to Wolverhampton almost three years ago to work for the then ‘Wolves Community Trust’ in a slightly different role. My background has always been in Sport Development, undertaking an undergraduate degree in PE and Sports Coaching Science at the University of Worcester, giving me numerous fantastic opportunities which eventually led me to Molineux.
So what is the role of an Inclusion and Cohesion Officer? Well, day to day I oversee a whole range of projects with perhaps the biggest being one of the Premier League Charitable Funds flagship programmes - Premier League Kicks. PL Kicks has a long history of using the power of football and the value of sports participation to help youngsters in some of the most high-need areas. By engaging them in constructive activities, including a wide variety of sports, coaching, music and educational and personal development sessions, our communities are given many opportunities to take part.
Our PL Kicks project is led by a fantastic team of coaches and youth workers who engage with young people aged from eight to 18 across the city from Heath Town to Whitmore Reans and Bilston to Bushbury. Our aim is to give the young people we engage with the opportunities they need to succeed and achieve. Over the next few months I will use this diary to introduce you to some of the participants who have used the project to change their lives and help improve their communities.
In my role I am also lucky enough to work closely with the Wolves Disability FC teams from Under 12’s all the way up to adults. I am sure a number of you will have seen our teams take to the Molineux pitch at half time against Cardiff and Aston Villa in recent years, and it is has been amazing to see our players get the coverage they deserve. Every time I see our teams train or play it is impossible not to be inspired by the resilience, work ethic and determination on display and I always leave with a smile on my face.
There is no doubt, just like everyone else, we have faced a number of problems over the last eight months with the national and local lockdowns. So many of the participants we engage with utilise their time with us to meet new people, maintain their activity level and keep themselves on a positive pathway. Infact, for some it can be the only social interaction they have in a week.
As soon as the national lockdown was put in place we started planning a range of online activities to ensure we were still able to interact with our thousands of participants. In terms of Inclusion and Cohesion we created a number of diverse football challenges for people of all ages and abilities to try out in their back gardens. It was vital we offered some form of physical activity and gave people the chance to enjoy some football in the sunshine.
We also ran FIFA 20 competitions across both PlayStation and Xbox which were aimed at our PL Kicks participants on Friday and Saturday evenings, a time when they would usually be attending one of our hub sessions. Participants could challenge a coach to a game or be a part of a wider scale tournament and due to the wonders of technology they were also able to engage in conversation with the coaches and their friends. This social interaction was an important part of checking on participants’ welfare throughout the difficult period. We recently rewarded our overall winner with a matchworn Wolves shirt!
As we moved out of lockdown we began to run a range of football activities for young people across the parks of Wolverhampton, before moving back into our regular hub sessions at Wolverhampton College and All Saints Community Project. Before Lockdown 2 came into effect, over 200 PL Kicks and Wolves Disability participants had taken up the opportunity of getting back out on the grass in a safe and socially distant environment.
The planning and preparation for these sessions has been a monumental task for the team and a huge difference to the norm. I can’t thank all the coaches enough for all their hard work in ensuring we were able to get these sessions up and running. It was definitely worth it to see all the participants enjoying themselves and back out playing football again. From my point of view it was also fantastic to see both mainstream and SEN children working together, discussing each other’s journeys and supporting each other to be the best they can be. That is truly what makes doing this job such a joy to do.
Since those sessions started we have had to go back into lockdown activities but hopefully we will soon be back delivering face-to-face again. We are busy planning the next phases of our delivery and we can’t wait to hopefully see more of you returning to sessions here at the Wolves Foundation over the coming months.
As you may also be aware, October was Black History Month. This was a time we used to create discussions with our PL Kicks participants about their role models and their thoughts on the importance of Black History Month and the Black Lives Matter movement. As a team, we created an informative sheet about important people of black heritage that have made a difference in a sporting context and sent this to all of our participants.
I think it is important, when considering recent events, that we all take the time to build our knowledge and understanding of this important topic. We created a video showing some of our participants discussing their thoughts and personally they taught me a lot. I think it is really powerful to hear the young people of our city talk like this.
I look forward to updating you again in a few weeks’ time.
