Your Game Impact: Bournemouth

Your Game matches community groups working with 16-25 year-olds to funding, training and employment opportunities. It does this through community festivals and year round support.

REGIONAL AMBASSADOR

Your Game first visited the South East coast in 2006 and Dominic Weir, Football Project Coordinator for Nacro in Bournemouth has been involved since 2007.

"The information about Your Game was fed down to me really through the Nacro network by our national sports manager. Once the information came through to me I contacted and encouraged local organisations to take part in the event and emphasised the potential benefits to their service users.

The biggest attraction and pull for us really was there isn't a lot of opportunities like it in this area, especially ran by such a huge organisation like the BBC. For those organisations that took the information I gave them and were pro active such as Nigel Short at Quay Foyer the experience has been fantastic.

The best thing about Your Game for me is that it treats everyone equally and takes the young people out of their comfort zone, it challenges them and at the same time supports them to go on to succeed in ways that they didn't think was possible.

I then I suppose became the Regional Co-ordinator for organising teams to attend Your Game 2008 for our area really and then I've worked for Your Game 2009 as an outreach worker.

I have had 23 young people obtain their football coaching certificate which came on the back of Your Game. I guess the big success story has been what Theone Coleman, Your Game 2008 All Star. I knew the music side of Your Game would appeal to him and after encouraging him to get a team together and come to the event he has taken the opportunity that Your Game has given him and grabbed it with both hands. Your game was the catalyst for him but it's the local networking and support that Theone and others like him have that sustain it. Your game has encouraged and delivered the local networking and that's vital for these young people."

LOCAL IMPACT

Nigel Short works as a Key Worker for Quay Foyer which is a UK registered charity operating in Poole, Dorset. Providing accommodation, personal support and access to activities, training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged, socially excluded young people aged 16-25.

"We took a team to Your Game 2007 and in 2008 a boys and girls team, the nature of our clientele are the harder to reach ones and we were expecting problems and a few of them to maybe go to the event and kick off. That didn't happen and what was the biggest surprise was that the football created a unity between them and afterwards we saw a positive change in their behaviour. We also had 5 of the team who went on to achieve their FA Level 1 in football coaching and a further 5 in 2008.

We have seen such big changes in some of the people who have taken part and gone from strength to strength. Your Game has given us the opportunity to network and supported our organisation and young people in numerous ways. Your Game created a memory that will stay with them for the rest of their lives rubbing shoulders with pop rap stars or whoever by meeting Skibadee which to them was massive.

My only disappointment is that Your Game didn't come to our area this year and we're hoping you'll be back here next year."

CASE STUDY

John's Story as told by Nigel Short

"A really good example of the impact that Your Game has is a lad called John. I've been his key worker for over a year whilst he was a resident with us and during that time he had tried a number of different jobs and training programmes. None of these lasted for very long and there where a few underlying personal issues that kept getting in the way.

John took part in the Your Game tournament and really had a good time. He then enrolled on the Your Game FA Coaching course and completed the programme. A short time after this he left the Quay Foyer to embark on his independent living. During this time his ex-partner had their baby and John was refused access to see his child. After a month or so John decided to clean up his act and started to look for a job not an easy task for him but eventually he was offered a part time job in a local school to help train their under 12 team using his coaching qualification.

He then went back to court to gain access rights to see his child. He had a lot of opposition from his ex-partner and her family due to his past behaviour but the judge gave him the access he asked for mainly due to the fact that he was now working and could now be regarded as a responsible adult.

When John was telling me about what had happened and how his life had changed direction he made it quite clear that this had started at Your Game. The opportunities this had presented to him in being able to enrol on and obtain the Coaching qualification enabled him to be where he is today and most importantly take an active role in his child's life."

Your Game is a BBC social inclusion project supported by Sport Relief.

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