Notts County Football In The Community’s Primary Goals 2 project – which is aiming to support children’s development across Nottingham – has been shortlisted for £50,000 of Big Lottery funding.
A public vote organised by ITV’s The People’s Projects will determine its success against rival projects from Leicestershire and Derbyshire later this month.
The Magpies-backed scheme previously designed and piloted the Primary Goals projects, which organisers say proved a huge success.
Primary Goals 2 is a new development in the initial project which has had a positive impact on more than 130 children from five schools in deprived parts of Nottingham.
Children who take part get a structured, comprehensive 10-week multi-sports and discussions programme – this includes activities designed to develop confidence, self-esteem, behaviour, teamwork and relationships.
The scheme’s education manager David Crook says if it gets the funding, the charity will work even more closely with more children.
“It could be delivered in any school in any ward – using deprivation indices, we work with LEAD Academy, schools in Sneinton, Radford and Hyson Green,” he said.
“Just about every ward in Nottingham has deprived areas, we would like to work in every area but we target deprived areas because it has a bigger impact.
“We have fantastic feedback from schools, everything has been positive, they’ve been so thankful – the students, the families, everyone can see the benefit it is bringing.”
He added: “If we were successful, we would like to have a bigger team – at the moment we would do a ten-week programme in a school but ideally as the author of this project I would like to embed it in a school curriculum and ethos.
“I’d like it to be embedded in their whole school development so we work with the same year groups over a period of time.
“If we got the £50,000 we could target specific groups and concentrate more targeted support for individuals in mainstream school.
“We work in special needs schools as well and it is tremendous – there is numerous ways we could use this £50,000 but believe me it would be such a good start.”
Session plans help children learn positive lessons about themselves, improve outcomes at school and in all parts of their life.
Senior manager at Football in the Community, Tim Hatton, says the project is of great importance to the future of Nottingham’s children.
“This project will not be a success without the community’s help,” he said.
“We’ve worked in partnership with local schools to develop the scheme of work, targeting areas of behaviour and social development that teachers believe is needed to ensure each child is successful in school and beyond.
“We want people to go online and vote for us, this is a great way for the public to secure £50,000 which will be invested in children from Nottingham.”
