EFL Week of Action: Ché Adams’ visit Redbridge School
What happens on the pitch is crucial to any football club. But that doesn’t mean responsibilities end with the search for three points or reaching the next round in a cup. Each club has a responsibility to the community and city it exists in and that’s what the EFL’s annual campaign, the EFL Week of Action aims to highlight.
From the 6th – 11th November this year, football clubs across the English Football League (EFL) have been demonstrating the roles they play in their towns and cities.
And it’s no different for us at Saints and our charity, Saints Foundation. Earlier this week, forward Ché Adams went along to Redbridge School to help out our Secondary School Engagement Coordinator, Caitlin Morris, with their after-school football club.
Caitlin oversees our Community Champions who are stationed full-time in nine different schools across Southampton, a unique model that isn’t happening at other club charities.
Watch the video below to see how Ché’s visit to Redbridge School went.
Each of our Community Champions is placed in a school to help students who struggle in a traditional classroom environment.
This Saints Foundation initiative is developed to fit the needs of the city. It provides intense, long-term engagement with pupils to encourage sustained change over time.
Our Champions support young people in boosting their self-esteem and ambitions in the classroom and show them different possibilities outside of the classroom too. But it wouldn’t be Saints if we didn’t offer some football as well, like the after school session Ché helped with earlier this week to promote teamwork and bringing people together.
Caitlin Morris is a Saints Foundation Secondary School Engagement Coordinator and works to improve the lives of young people in Southampton schools every day: ‘The impact the Saints badge has, it gives us the ability to go and change people's lives in the community. And that’s really important because we work with people right from primary school age all the way up to senior adults.
I think the EFL Week of Action is an amazing opportunity for clubs to show they’re giving back. Obviously, you have the players on the pitch who are an inspiration to so many young people, but to show other people from clubs are also able to go and give something back too, I think it’s hugely important.’
So, what do the results of having our Community Champions in schools look like? Last year, 59% of pupils working with a Champ improved their engagement in school, 65% improved their mental well-being and 44% said they gained a positive role model in their Champ.
And this year, Saints Foundation is aiming even higher, with more Champs in schools than ever before, to help as many young people as possible.
Community Champions is just one of multiple initiatives the Saints Foundation is running to make a difference in Southampton. If you’d like to learn more about the work the Foundation does, take a look on our website.
