This blog has been written by FA Leadership Academy 2025 participant Cally,

The Football Association Leadership Academy (FALA) has taught me a lot, allowed me to make friends in new places and made me look at myself in a different light. I am delivering a project as part of the programme, The Michael Project, where I offer free football sessions to pan disability children in my local area of Durham. The project aims to show young children with disabilities that they can play too and that just because they are different does not mean that they can't play football. The Michael Project isn't just about the physical aspect of football, it's about understanding the game and addressing everyone's needs within the game, and help them grow and that's exactly what FALA helped me do.

My project with FALA has taught four key lessons.

Lesson One: Resilience

Through the growth of my project, I have had to overcome huge challenges that have been thrown at me from every angle. All the challenges have caused me to become more resilient and have taught me that not every challenge can be tackled head on and that certain challenges may need a different strategy to overcome.

Lesson Two: Confidence

Going into FALA I was a somewhat confident person, but there was always that little bit of doubt in the back of my mind. My FALA project has erased that little bit of doubt that was lingering in the back of mine. This allowed me to put more energy into my project, instead of wasting it on those little thoughts of doubts.

Lesson Three: Self esteem

Before going into FALA, my self-esteem was not very good, and I was struggling with coming up with solutions and ideas that were going to have an impact. Through the lessons and guidance from FALA and my mentor, I have been able to increase my self-esteem and create new ground breaking ideas for my project.

Lesson Four: Honour & Pride

When leaving the FALA residential I felt that a sense of rising honour and pride that my project would succeed was instilled within me, with the skills that I learned at FALA and from my mentors. I have been able to feel honour and pride not just in my project but also in myself. FALA allowed me to feel honour and pride with every step I made and every word and moment that occurred in my life from the moment I left FALA to the moment that your reading this now.

FALA was the best thing that has ever happened to me and that I hope FALA can provide the same things to others that it did to me.