Matt Fisher
Active Leaders is a leadership training course for young people. We use fun games and activities, to broaden the appeal, to develop key transferable leadership and employability skills, to build confidence and resilience. Our 10-session course is 25 hours long, and can be delivered in a variety of formats, but ideally on four consecutive days. It culminates in the CIMSPA accredited Active Leader Award. I have attached an infographic that outlines the course.
The Active Leader training includes risk management, safeguarding, first aid and CPR, planning and leading an activity session, creating games, organising and running a mini event, marketing and budgeting. Each trainee receives a resource pack, T-shirt and at the end of the course a personal reference, a volunteering recommendation, Award certificate and pin badge.
Our training courses enable young people to become Active Leaders - activity and event assistants, with pathways to work experience, volunteering and employment. We use fun games and activities as a means of doing this, building workplace skills, experience, confidence and identifying next step opportunities. Since 2016 we have run over 70 courses, trained 1200 Active Leaders, each of whom have completed a feedback survey and given the course a 100% approval rating.
We have partnered with many organisations to fund access to Active Leaders courses, including local councils, schools, colleges and universities, Activity Partnerships and amazing community youth projects. One recent example is a partnership with The FA as part of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Legacy, to deliver an Active Leader Football Programme specifically for young female leaders of the future. Now in its second phase of delivery of the Active Leader courses, 150 young women have taken their first steps to leadership within the female game. The programme, for girls aged 15 to 17, kicked off in Southampton in February 2022 and continued throughout the summer of 2022 at five other UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 host cities that signed up for the programme. The four-day course provided participants with valuable leadership skills to support and develop girls’ football in their local communities, such as CPR and first aid awareness, basic safeguarding and risk management, preparation, planning, communication, marketing, budgeting, hands-on delivery and volunteering. The aspiring leaders then had the chance to put their skills into practice with a six-session placement at a Weetabix Wildcats girls’ football club with a local community football provider. Please watch this short film for a summary of the project and the views of some of the trained Active Leaders -
I would love the opportunity to talk further and explore ways in which we could work together to help young people to improve their job prospects and find the confidence and courage to reach their full potential.