When I was selected to be a part of the Hertfordshire FA Youth Council, all I knew was that I wanted to make a difference within the football community across the county. So, I put pen to paper and after a flow of ideas, I presented the idea of a mental health workshop named "Get Talking". The aim of this workshop is to make mental health less taboo amongst young people, targeting those between the ages of 11-18. The Hertfordshire FA Youth Council has five focus areas in support of Hertfordshire FA’s wider strategy, with each member being paired with a staff lead. This season, I was assigned as the Mental Health & Wellbeing Champion, with the opportunity to team up with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Champions to create and deliver this workshop.
With the planning phase well under way, I was invited to Watford FC to have a meeting with their mental health and wellbeing staff lead. Having this meeting enabled me to gain valuable knowledge on the logistics and organisation of a workshop. For example, going into this meeting, I was unsure of what the workshop was going to look like - I only knew that I wanted it to run for a full day. However, following the advice from Watford FC, I decided to condense the workshop down to one hour. Now, it was time to go back to the drawing board.
Once all the ideas had been cemented, the EDI team and I agreed that the workshop would consist of the importance of mental health, how to deal with bottling things up, advice on looking after yourself mentally, ways to overcome setbacks, talking about inspirations and the importance of thanks and gratitude to wrap up the session. When creating the resources, I discovered how life changing Canva pro is, I don’t think I will ever be able to live without it!
To show off the group's hard work and polish our resources, I had a final meeting with the Hertfordshire FA CEO and Youth Council staff lead. Delivery day soon came around after that... 6 months of hard work came down to this moment. Alongside an EDI Champion, we were gifted the opportunity to deliver to 27 engaging year 7 students. A workshop highlight would be the graffiti wall task, which came under "overcoming setbacks", a task involving leaving positive comments for the next person with the aim of motivating them to overcome any challenges.
Some feedback that stood out to me was, “I really like it because I’ve had lots of fun. I was laughing so much throughout. It was helpful and we got told lots of new information. The explanation was good, and they made sure everyone knew what to do.” This feedback is important to us because it reflects the positive impact we set out to have.
A massive thank you to the 27 students we delivered to; without their interaction and enthusiasm the session wouldn’t have gone as well as it did. To the FALA 2022 team, thank you for opening the door to my leadership journey which has influenced the existence of this workshop. To everyone at Hertfordshire FA, a massive thank you for taking a chance on me this season and facilitating this workshop. To Steph, Harry and Dani, thank you for having me at your workshops, I have learnt so much form you all which has enabled me to deliver an engaging workshop that has a long-lasting positive impact just like yours.
I can’t wait to develop and take the workshop further next season.
Remember to always take risks. You never know, it might pay off.
