Football Can Be A Tool For Social Change, Too

It all began in a common room at a university in London in 2009, a space for chatting with peers, entertaining and innovating, and in this case, innovating the concept behind Football Beyond Borders. Sparked after the 2011 London riots, the university football captain Jasper Kain, along with his teammates, began a summer football tour before running youth football sessions in South London, and harnessing the power of sport for social change. Formally established as a charity in 2014, Football Beyond Borders uses football as a vehicle to give young people agency, opportunities, and shape their future.

The creation of Football Beyond Borders girls’ programme in 2018 marked a shift in the way football was perceived and the way Football Beyond Borders behaved. Piloting as a full academic year programme, the girls’ programme focuses on giving girls and young non-binary people mental wellbeing, opportunity, and agency through the medium of football. With 38 hours of project-based classroom sessions accompanied by 38 hours of pitch-based football activities, the work of Football Beyond Borders is deeply rooted in questions of identity, societal issues, and the roots of low self-esteem.

Ceylon Hickman, 26, and Debra Nelson are the two women who have been there from the start of the girls’ programme. “We exist to support young people who might be disengaged in education,” says Hickman, who formally joined FBB in the summer of 2018 as the Head of Volunteering, Social Action and Female Participation – the same year Nelson worked as a member of staff – and now works as the Head of Brand. The same year, Hickman attempted to turn an idea – centring initially on Serena Williams – to a fully-fledged programme, despite the initial lack of funding from school leaders.

So why was the programme created? “We have a mainstream education system that doesn’t cater for the needs of so many young people now,” says Hickman. Currently, the girls’ programme is working with schools across London and the North West of England, providing opportunities within and beyond the classroom to aid their development, and improve social and emotional skills.

“The government has made life so much harder for young people over the last 10 to 15 years,” Hickman continues. “There are so many more young people with trauma, experiencing adverse childhood experiences, and more children living in poverty than ever before. And all of these things can play into your personal development.” This is where Football Beyond Borders comes into play.

Nelson, who joined Football Beyond Borders at the age of 12, was the first girl to work with the charity, and initially started on the boys’ programme (due to the girls’ programme not having been created). “Being the first girl Football Beyond Borders ever worked with was an honour,” says Nelson, now 20. “But it also came with its own trials and tribulations,” from feeling out-of-place on a pitch dominated by boys to confronting stereotypes of women head-on. Echoing this sentiment, Hickman recalls her first meeting with the head of delivery and other colleagues as the only woman, who then instructed her to go into a classroom of girls with FIFA cards.

“I was going through a curriculum that was designed for my male peers, and trying to make it work, and adapt,” says Nelson. “Being the only girl in a male space is quite a difficult space to navigate. I remember coming home [from practice] sometimes and questioning my space and belonging in that group,” she recalls.

The Scheme

The girls’ programme uses football as a teaching point to improve group dynamics, raise their aspirations, and develop interpersonal skills. By acting as an extension to a school’s pastoral team, the girls’ programme particularly focuses on the roots of low self-esteem among girls and non-binary young people. Last year, a study by the Prince’s Trust and the Education Policy Institute found that girls have much lower self-esteem during their teenage years, with a 15% drop in girls’ self-esteem between the ages of 11 and 14. While young people’s mental health deteriorated over their teenage years, girls were more significantly impacted.

A 2021 study found that girls have much lower self-esteem during their teenage years, with a 15% drop in girls’ self-esteem between the ages of 11 and 14.

But Football Beyond Borders aims to tackle that. The scheme of learning on the girls’ programme is fittingly entitled “Unapologetically Us”, during which participants learn the importance of cultivating relationships, managing emotions, and self-regulation. Anger is reframed as a response to injustice and a tool for driving change, instead of an emotion running ceaselessly in the mind.

So how does football come in? The charity ultimately uses football as a tool for social change. “On a football pitch, it's so easy to teach a young person self-regulation – you teach them how to manage their emotions when decisions are not really going their way,” says Nelson. Football is used as “an incentive to try and get them to learn those transferable skills that they might learn on a football pitch and bring them into their school life.”

Belonging

Speaking about her initial experience, Nelson says: “I remember being on the pitch, playing as normal and constantly overhearing the other team making comments like ‘Why’s she here? What’s she doing? Why are they playing with a girl?’, and ‘I can’t tackle her’,” says Nelson. “I didn't want to bring any attention to it, and at the end, the boys could notice that I wasn't myself. I wasn't excited. We just won but I wasn't happy.”

Nelson continues: “They asked, ‘what happened?’, and I told them. They said: ‘Why didn't you say anything? We would have stopped playing, we would have done something – you're part of our team’. And that was for me, the first time that I felt secure; a sense of belonging.” While the programme ended four years ago, they’re now some of her closest friends.

It’s this feeling of belonging the girls’ programme at Football Beyond Borders wants to preserve. “It’s a unique sense of belonging that being in a group of a team of young women and non-binary young people can provide,” says Hickman.

The importance of supporting young people with interpersonal relationships as they navigate life is threaded throughout the programme too. “Football Beyond Borders always believed that relationships change the world and give you meaning in your life, so equipping people to be able to build those relationships – and providing a safe space for them to be their authentic self – is so important,” Hickman continues.

And support and solidarity can manifest in the smallest of ways – while the girls’ programme is firmly grounded in empowerment and support, comprising of weekly 1:1 therapy sessions, holiday support among others, solidarity can be shown through the smallest yet meaningful things – such as Hickman packing sanitary products for a tour during the girls’ programme. “I was always the person that just had to provide that kind of stuff for myself – I don't think my coaches would have been thinking about that,” Nelson laughs.

Sisterhood

Community is the lifeblood of Football Beyond Borders, with the theme of sisterhood embedded in its girls’ programme.

“I had to be on an all-boys program just to play football,” says Nelson. “But the one thing I really wanted to get out of the girls’ programme was creating a space where the girls can champion each other rather than belittling each other – and that’s where we get a real sense of sisterhood.”

Hickman agrees. “We live in a world where women are pitted against each other,” she says. “You don’t realise it until you’re older, and actually there’s such strength in all women’s spaces; women supporting women; sisterhood.”

At the heart of Football Beyond Borders girls’ programme, then, lies a home: “When you can find the right space, the right team – there's a power in that sense of community and sisterhood that I don't experience in other parts of my life,” says Hickman“And we can bring that to a 12-year-old who may not have ever thought that football was for her, may not even like football.”

I really wanted to create a space where the girls can champion each other rather than belittling each other.

Over the years, Football Beyond Borders has succeed in creating a programme where girls and non-binary young people are able to flourish without being bound by societal constraints, school, or peer pressure. The charity now engages with 500 girls nationally since its 2018 launch. “We teach them to leave the drama at the door,” says Nelson. “It’s all about empowering each other.”

In September of this year, the organisation is expanding to the West Midlands, where they will have their third region of girls’ programmes, producing a network of safe spaces for girls and non-binary young people that will, goal by goal, dismantle the prejudices within society. So where does the future lie for Football Beyond Borders? “Growth!” says Hickman. “Our girls’ programmes are currently around one third of our programmes, and we want to make it 50/50 in the next two years.”