PL Inspires’ week of special events

Premier Leagues Inspires uses the power of football to motivate and engage young people aged 11 to 18 who are not predicted to reach their full potential – and our participants have been busy.

Last week seven events took place at Emirates Stadium to mark National Careers Week and International Women’s Day. Young people took in “A Day in the Life” events, in which we studied different club departments to allow young people to understand the range of careers available to them. The week concluded on International Women’s Day on March 8, when we invited 75 girls from across our Community programmes for an event called Exploring Arsenal – a day of networking with Arsenal staff (as seen above), stadium tours and a celebration of the amazing female role models in our lives.

Arsenal in the Community delivers PL Inspires, which combines classroom and football activities, across Hackney, Camden and Islington supporting young people to develop the skills and confidence they need to succeed in life. PL Inspires, which was established in 2018 and has had more than 2,000 participants since then, involves both long-term programmes, where young people are supported for eight to 16 weeks, and one-off events.

A large part of the project is about supporting youth social action and enabling young people to make positive contributions to their community, and every year the Premier League hosts a National Challenge Event where teams from across the country come together to present their social action project.

This year the team to represent us at this competition was decided through a local heat in which 16 teams competed for top spot. Well done to our winners Youth Excellence from Petchey Academy – all roads now lead to the PL event and national final.

For more information on PL Inspires email Holly Fanshawe, Secondary Education Curriculum Lead, at hfanshawe@arsenal.co.uk