Local youngsters rise to the Premier League Inspires Challenge

This season, young people were tasked with considering what environmental sustainability challenges football clubs might face. Cardiff City FC Community Foundation representatives from St Cyres School developed a project to produce energy via kinetic tiles underneath football pitches.

The Challenge is one element of the Premier League Inspires programme, which run on a weekly basis to support young people who are at risk of not reaching their potential as they move through the education system and early adulthood.

The Premier League Inspires Challenge empowers participants to take on a social action project and make a difference to the world around them.

Having come up with their environmental social action ideas, participants joined one of five regional celebration events taking place at football clubs across the country, where they shared details of their activity with teams of their peers representing 44 clubs from across the Premier League and the English Football League.

Launched in 2019, Premier League Inspires creates life-changing opportunities for young people who have been identified by their schools as needing extra support to engage with activities, helping them to develop the personal skills and positive attitudes needed to succeed in life.

Using the power of football, the programme helps to prepare young people for further education and employment through a series of face-to-face mentoring sessions, workshops and social-action projects.

In the last 12 months, Premier League Inspires has supported over 200 young people through 960 sessions in 9 local schools.