‘She Inspires’ programme using football to empower young women in Liverpool schools
The 'She Inspires' schools programme aims to work with female pupils offering a mix of practical and workshop sessions including access to FA Qualifications. Helping with confidence, self-esteem and leadership. The sessions are run by Everton in the Community and the LFC Foundation.
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00:00 The She Inspires Schools programme works with female pupils in years 8 and 9.
00:06 It offers a mix of practical and workshop sessions including weekly
00:10 coaching as well as access to FA qualifications.
00:14 I think it's really important around the confidence and the self-esteem and
00:17 empowering our girls living out in our communities. We know in terms of the
00:22 challenges that our girls and young women face in terms of exploitation and
00:27 the risk then into sexual exploitation or the risk in getting involved in
00:31 county lines but also healthy relationships and leading to violence
00:35 against women and girls. If we can give the girls living in our communities the
00:39 confidence, empower them, give them tactics and little things that they can
00:44 fall back on when things get tough so that when they face those big things
00:48 that's what this is about.
00:50 The programme was launched by the Police and Crime Commissioner
00:53 Emily Spurrell and Chief Constable Serena Kennedy in March 2022 to mark
00:58 International Women's Day.
01:00 The She Inspires programme is something that the Chief Constable and I have funded because we really wanted to invest in young
01:06 women and give them access to opportunities. You know football is
01:09 something that kind of runs throughout the heart of this city and but we knew
01:12 that lots of women weren't necessarily always getting those opportunities so
01:15 we've done this we funded this programme and you can see the kind of behind me
01:18 the energy and enthusiasm for it which is great but importantly we've also got
01:21 things running through it that's around the skills and how they develop their
01:24 resilience their strength how do they kind of develop those skills that would
01:28 be useful that might take them into future employment so it's really around
01:31 using the sport and the activity to get them engaged and then looking at how we
01:34 support them to be kind of rounded as part of it.
01:37 As well as getting out onto the pitch the girls take part in workshops covering key themes such as
01:43 aspirations, confidence, leadership, team-building and self-esteem.
01:48 Today's topic's been around resilience so we've had a bit of time just in the classroom getting
01:54 the young people to tell us what they think resilience is, what it means to
01:57 them and how they've overcome it so we've had a few examples given by the
02:01 young people and then we've brought that out onto the pitch now so they're just
02:04 going through a practical session with the coaches.
02:07 The bespoke football initiative is supported by the Liverpool FA with the sessions being run by Everton in the community and the LFC Foundation.
02:16 I ultimately want them to take it in all walks of life with them so whether it's in the streets, in the schools, at home, in careers,
02:22 whatever they look to do in the future we want to basically give them a
02:25 springboard of opportunity now to lay them foundations to take it on to better
02:29 themselves we want to inspire them we want to raise their aspirations and if
02:33 we can provide additional pathways and opportunities to support that then we do
02:37 not only go for the for the young girls within the city we want to also leave a
02:41 legacy and sustainability that they then become role models for the next.
02:45 There's some fantastic success stories already we've got girls here who are now signing up to play
02:50 grassroots football you know we talked to them about careers within policing and
02:56 it would be brilliant if a few of them end up in that wider policing family.
03:00 My hope is that we have a generation of empowered confident young women.