Waltham Forest Schools Youth Sports Ambassadors

The PE Department had the opportunity to select 12 students from both years 8 and 9 to represent our school in a bid to pitch for £500 of funding to create events that will bridge our local community through sport.

The following students were chosen:

Year 8:                                                                Year 9 

Callum Giddens                                             Stanley Johnson

Finnlay Bannister                                         Sachin Chetty

Jonathan Crossley                                      Archie Walker

Kyra Crowley                                                 Shani Bennett

Alisha Money                                                 Grace Lobela

Daisy Morris                                                   Lilly-Mae Bannister

Mentor: Mr Abberley 

As you can see, the group are a balance of 6 females and 6 males and are a mixture of different races, cultures, belief systems, ideals and backgrounds. This diversity has proven to be a wonderful asset as the students have offered fantastic insights into how they initially can be a part of such a team and how they intend to move forwards together.

Our aim is simple: Design activities using the £500 budget to bridge the gap between communities, young and old people, teachers and students through the use of physical activity and sport to promote happiness, mental well-being, health and fitness, social cohesion and togetherness.

We first established the boundaries we face as both a school and community in order to give focus to our direction and be precise with our intentions.

This was an insightful process as the group came to realise that as a community we face many issues that separate us, such as:

Wealth, mental health, racism, sexism, culture, ageism, ability, disability and many more.

We then began to put together ideas to create our plan that we intended to present to Mr Grundy.

This meeting was positive and very stimulating. The four students who represented the group were articulate, thoughtful and reflective and highlighted just how fantastic our young people can really be. I was very proud to be a part of that moment!

The meeting was as success and now we intend to finalise our plan and present it to the Borough board on Dec 17^th. If we are successful, this will open the door to a very eventful and hopefully positively connecting set of events that bring firstly our school together, then our community.

I would like to think that this is the start of something very exciting for our Youth Ambassadors as they are aiming to create events that will hopefully have such a fantastically strong impact on our school that it will begin to break patterns and change people for the better.

Well done all of you so far for giving up lunch times to meet and good luck with your presentation next week!!

You are all AMAZING!!

Mr Abberley