Kicking on from Covid

Aim

To re-engage with the youth community in Banbridge to provide them with the platform in which to flourish as they kick on from Covid.

Banbridge Town Junior Football Club is a community focused club based in County Down. The club provides football and associated opportunities for children from under-7 to under-16 from the local area. The club currently fields 16 teams across the 10 junior age groups on a weekly basis in a mixture of participation and competitive leagues.

The club has always prided itself on offering a platform for children from every background and every area of the district to come together with a shared purpose to enhance all of their lives.

As the club emerged from an extensive period of lockdown restrictions in May 2021, we found the youth community in the Banbridge area to be very different from it had been prior to March 2020. Nearly 14 months of lockdowns and restrictions had led to many of the children becoming disengaged from the activities and groups which they would previously have known as the norm.

Whilst we have tried to get back to normal in the ensuring 10 months since May 2021 we, like many clubs, have found it difficult and hampered by continuing stops and starts as covid continues to play a significant role in all our lives. We as a club have come to learn that a series of new challenges have now emerged for our young members which are affecting their development into the young adults of the future:

• social interaction
• loneliness
• motivation
• exercise
• family hardship (due to loss of work as a result of the pandemic)
• a range of mental health issues.

Enough is enough. We as a club want to help our youth community to kick on from covid. We have spent the last six months engaging with our membership and their families to better understand the local community in which they live because we want to help. We now have a PLAN!

We aim to provide opportunities for children from the local community to 'kick on from covid' through a shared interest in football. We will:

1. Enhance the scope of services which the club offers by offering 'taster' sessions in two specific new groups which we have identified as being specifically affected by covid - 4-6 years old and 16-18 years old.

2. For kids 4-6 years old we will establish a 'Cub Camp' for six weeks in May and June 2022 which will offer opportunities for children in their formative years to come together with a wide range of children from other communities throughout the local area. For the first four weeks of this programme we will run regional sessions across the full geographical area of Banbridge to ensure that we capture the imagination of children from every corner of our community. Sessions will be run at five centres in Loughbrickland, Gilford, Scarva, Annaclone and Banbridge. The last two weeks will see the children all come together at a central venue in Banbridge to share their experiences of fun and football.

3. For the 16-18 year olds, who have been reported as the age group most impacted by covid, we will for the first time as a club offer an eight week hub programme where they will not only be able to enjoy 90 mins football sessions but also have the opportunity to learn from and talk to professionals from a wide range of disciplines related to where they find their lives at present. Topics covered will include:

• suicide awareness
• controlling aggression
• depression
• e-safety and online awareness
• nutrition
• bullying
• promoting mental health and wellbeing
• harmful sexual behaviour
• a range of football specific courses which will highlight the opportunities which exist within football for young people today.

We hope that we will assist in preparing this group for adulthood which isn't too far away and that engagement will be at a level that enables the club to offer these children a permanent shared platform to grow together in the 2022/23 season which will follow from September this year.

4.  We will also not forget our other existing age groups. Whilst the majority of the members in these groups returned to football following the pandemic many remain affected off the field by the challenges which covid brought. We will assist these groups in two main ways. Firstly we will offer them access to the full range of age specific professional services outlined above (for the 16-18 year old group). Secondly, if stretch funding is achieved, we will arrange football festivals to bring together all of the youth football clubs from the area around Banbridge to enhance the opportunities for social interaction in the period after the end of the normal football season in early May 2022.

5 . To assist us in doing this we will also embark on a programme of re-educating our coaches to be better equipped with the 'new' challenges which have emerged within our young players since covid became part of our lives. We will educate our coaches on non-football matters including mental health so that they can act as 'first responders' to the children under their tutelage. We will also offer the coaches the opportunity to avail of shared leaning and mentoring opportunities as part of bespoke Continuous Personal Development plans.

Our aim is that this programme will enable our club and our youth community to all 'kick on from covid' and put us all in a better place as we start to fully emerge from the place where the pandemic took us.

This project successfully funded on 30th May 2022