Foundation

Working towards a fairer future through football

TALKING anti-discrimination was the flavour of the day as The Albion Foundation's Premier League Kicks participants took part in an educational workshop before playing in a football tournament.

You can see how the tournament unfolded in the gallery above.

The focus was to educate the youngsters around discrimination whilst looking at how cultural conditioning and influence can cause different types of discrimination, with Raymond Lynn from Fair Football taking the workshop.

Fair Football is a charity that uses the power of football to look into cultural stereotyping, hate crime and British values whilst connecting people from different backgrounds to mix with people that they ordinarily wouldn't hang out with.

"We want to teach them that you can be different, but you are still equal," said Raymond.

"It educates them at the same time about the people they are playing football with that are from those different backgrounds."

The workshop was attended by participants from the Kicks programme from areas across Sandwell, with Paul Blagrove, the Foundation's Kicks Officer, organising the day to help get the participants out from their homes or away from being on the streets.

"It gives them a different perspective around culture," said Paul.

"It's not just the racial aspect, it has got stuff around homophobia and sexuality, which are things that they don't really learn on a day-to-day basis in their school environment.

"We've used football as a tool to get them to experience the workshop."

The lessons taught by Raymond and Paul seem to have had an impact, with Mahamadou Sillah, a Kicks participant, taking a lot from the day.

"The workshop was talking about discriminating in football and discrimination in general," he said.

"We learnt that a human being can discriminate someone without even knowing it.

"It was engaging and he asked us lots of questions, so it was fun."

For more information on the Foundation's Kicks programme, please contact paul.blagrove@albionfoundation.co.uk.