My name is Lucy Casey, and I am one of the Equal Games Leads at the London FA Youth Council. The reason why I am involved in London FA Youth Council is simple really, it’s about being the person you wished you had growing up, after all “if you can see it, you can be it”. Therefore, through my knowledge of the game, personal experiences and my Multimedia Sports Journalism Degree at UCFB Wembley, I hope that my presence can create positive change for young people in London and I’m excited to work with like-minded individuals at the Youth Council to provide great opportunities for others.
On a monthly basis at our meetings, I am surrounded by inspiring individuals at the London FA Youth Council meetings, but just before the New Year, we were able to get to know some new faces when we collaborated with Surrey and Middlesex Youth Councils. Not only did this bring fresh energy and exciting alternate ideas, but also snacks to help us along the way!
As always with our Youth Council meetings we started the evening with ice breakers, the only difference this time was that it was on a bigger scale. As a people person, I loved engaging with the other council members in particular, in both a jokey way, but also with a shared vision towards impacting the game. This underlying understanding of goals and hopes for the individual Youth Councils, and therefore us as youth leaders as a collective, was reinforced throughout the night- particularly through the presentations.
Each County FA Youth Council took turns to speak to the rest of the room about their journey so far, talking through the positives and improvements, as well as where they hope to see themselves in the future. The floor was opened to questions following each presentation, where we got to delve deeper into some of their plans and projects they had already delivered, this made me feel really connected to the other councils.
This was a really rewarding night which concluded with a video task, in which we mixed with members from the other youth councils to create a video explaining why confidence in networking was important- a skill which shone throughout the whole evening. We felt our learnings could be helpful to share with others.
The meeting proved to be very effective to connect like-minded individuals with the aim to improve football for young people, after all the more people that come together, the more influence they can have! We hope to continue this collaboration moving forward in the future. Is this something you have ever thought about doing with other youth councils? What might be the benefit for your youth council team?