WATCH: How football is changing young lives in the UK
Football Beyond Borders is a British charity that uses the power of football to change the lives of young people.
In partnership with Media City
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00:00Football is one of the best things in the world to build relationships and we believe in relationships as a thing that will change and support young people.
00:12We know that there are hundreds of thousands of young people who are super talented, really engaged in football, want to learn but they're not fulfilling their potential in mainstream school.
00:21It is our job to support those young people.
00:24We use football as our entry point, it's like our Trojan horse into young people's lives.
00:29If you want to change the world and make it better, fairer and more just, education is the place to start.
00:34My name is Salon Andy Hickman and I'm the Director of External Relations at Football Beyond Borders.
00:50Football Beyond Borders is an education charity, we work with young people who are really passionate about football but disengaged in some form at school.
00:58And we work to support them to get the skills and the grades they need to successfully transition to adulthood.
01:03There are so many young people growing up in this country with so many different challenges linked to poverty, linked to the trauma that they're experiencing because of that poverty.
01:12So it is very much the FAB role and responsibility to be that practitioner in the end person's life to say you do matter, we care about you, we are here for you.
01:25The main mechanism of change that we focus on is a trusted adult relationship for young people.
01:31We believe in a world where every young person has a trusted adult by their side whilst they're going through the difficult years of adolescence.
01:37When young people are on our programme, we teach them five core skills.
01:41These are self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision making and relationship skills.
01:49The reason we teach these is that there is evidence if you teach these five skills, young people's academic performance will benefit from that.
01:56I think FAB being in the UK is massively important. In young people's lives there are a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties, a lot of borders.
02:05Our focus is being therapeutically informed and having unconditional positive regard to the young people.
02:10Those things break down some of the barriers that young people face growing up.
02:13Young people are the future, right? Getting them to reach their full potential and just acknowledge being themselves and enjoying being themselves is what drives me the most.
02:21It's seeing their faces, smiling and having conversations. We just want them to ultimately get those maths and English GCSEs.
02:29Today we were just working on football skills and teamwork while playing football.
02:35FUB is really fun and it's great to like be with my friends all the time.
02:41Me and my friends have gained so much more confidence. It's a great space, a great environment to be in.
02:47I love FUB personally. I think everyone, they all have different reasons why it helps and why they enjoy it but I just like getting to know people.
02:57I get to know people that I never thought I would talk to ever.
03:01I'm not the best footballer. I've not done it in the past but I think it's really good for people that want to play football,
03:10I've never had that opportunity to. There's just a space where you don't feel judged. Everyone gets a chance to try and just do their best.
03:20We're really lucky to have worked with some of the biggest names in football. We've worked with Marcus Rashford.
03:29We deliver his programme for students transitioning from primary to secondary school and it's about building their confidence which is really cool.
03:36Marcus has been down to programmes, he's played football with young people. He deeply cares about community and young people and their futures.
03:49We've worked with Ian Wright to design and deliver an eight week module that is all about teaching about black British history to young people in schools.
03:58And it's all about looking at the positive figures who have shaped black British history in this country and Ian's really passionate about it.
04:04He's a really, really special character.
04:11We're so lucky to be able to work with these people because not only do they help us grow but they also create amazing moments with young people and they're really amazing moments.
04:20The most valuable feedback that we would receive from young people in the programme is actually just observing their growth, their relationship to school changing.
04:33And the most pride or joy that I get is actually hearing the stories from my team.
04:39It takes a village to create change and we're very lucky that the colleagues that I work with are some of the most inspiring people I ever met and get to learn from every single day.
04:48And I think that passion, intellect and drive, that combination means that we're able to keep doing what we're doing.
04:58The best thing about working at FBB and with young people is that sense of possibility, optimism and pace of change.
05:08And I think that's infectious and that filters through this organisation.
05:12Things can be better for young people if we work hard at it.
05:18We have ambitions and we really want to scale and we're thinking now about how do we influence the system.
05:24We believe in an education system where every young person has that access to a trusted adult in school.
05:29So for us it's about how can you train staff in schools to be that trusted adult.
05:34The impact we see every single year is consistently getting better.
05:39Football just has such a power to connect people and to connect with people.
05:42So for me, Football Beyond Borders combining education with football, it's just the perfect place to make a real impact in a young person's life.
