Posts Tagged ‘football’
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By VJonny 21st December 10
It’s time to announce the first batch of Make the Team winners; that’s right, eleven lucky fans have won tickets to see their favourite Premier League Clubs live and the great thing is we’ve still got more tickets to give away. Entering is easy, just upload a photograph of yourself volunteering here, choose your favourite team and be entered into our prize draw to win match tickets.
Applicants have been coming in thick and fast from the North West of England with Manchester United fans proving to be the most giving supporters with a massive 28% of the entries, followed shortly by rivals Liverpool! Here’s a breakdown of the top five most giving fans (so far) in our competition:- Manchester United
- Liverpool
- Arsenal
- Chelsea
- Manchester City
There’s still everything to play for however as we’ll be tallying up ALL the entries to see which team comes out on top at the end of the competition so even if your team’s been slipping on the pitch this season there’s still a chance of them coming top of the league of givers!
So, we’re all used to hearing about the great work that footballers do on the pitch but what about the great work many of them do off the pitch? Two thirds of young people (62 %) believe that the good deeds footballers do go unnoticed, overshadowed by the negative news often picked up in the press. With this in mind we took the time to find out who your most inspirational players off the pitch were and here are the top five results:
1. David Beckham
Patron of his own charity the Victoria and David Beckham Charitable Trust that has given over £1 million to charity, worked for Comic Relief, Help For Heroes and UNICEF.
2. Alan Shearer
Is an ambassador for the NSPCC as well as playing in the recent Special Olympics Unity Cup at the recent World Cup in South Africa. Alan also gave his £1.6 million testimonial money to charities across the North East.
3. Gary Lineker
Worked for a number of years with Children With Leukaemia and is also an ambassador for Cancer Research UK and CLIC Sargent.
4. Frank Lampard
Works with a number of Cancer charities including CLIC Sargent and the Teenage Cancer Trust.
5. Ryan Giggs
Donated money to the Royal College Of Nursing as part of the Channel 4 documentary The Million Pound Footballers Giveaway as well as being a UK ambassador for UNICEF
You can find out more about some of the Premier League’s most giving players here.
If you’ve entered Make the Team we’d love to hear what activities you’ve been up to (leave your comments below) and if you haven’t yet why not do it now – time’s running out to win!
Good luck.
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By VJonny 17th November 10
Cameron with footballer Michael Owen
Let me tell you about the time I met David Cameron. Well actually, no, not the David Cameron, but now I have your attention, I’ll tell you about another Cameron – in fact I don’t even know his second name, he was just ‘Cameron’, a genuine guy who has no idea how inspiring he actually is…
I recently attended a seminar called ‘For Youth’s Sake’ in the Abbey Centre, Westminster, London; the seminar was organised by young people, Children & Young People Now and chaired by editor Ravi Chandiramani. The theme for the seminar was ‘The future of young people’s services’, the seminar also doubled as an opportunity to highlight and promote the ongoing ‘For Youth’s Sake‘ campaign, which demonstrates the importance and invaluable role of youth services on young people’s lives. In attendance were many professionals from the youth and community sector, keen to listen to, debate with, and hear from MPs and heads of young people’s services about the future of youth services.A question time debate had been organised – the panel included MP Stuart Jackson, Linda Jack, a representative of the Liberal Democrats Party with a keen interest in youth affairs, Terry Ryall chief executive of v, Fiona Blacke chief executive of the National Youth Agency, and last but not least Labour MP Stella Creasy.
Although fascinating – the debate however was not the stand out moment of the event for me…It was, infact, a young lad called Cameron, one of the young people invited along to present a speech. Cameron had until the event never spoken in public or been to an event of this kind – he was clearly nervous – yet he stood up and did it, following a series of trained speakers and debaters. Cameron with no experience, in a totally foreign environment really went for it! Perhaps it wasn’t the perfect speech, Cameron lost his lines, messed up words, ocassionally took gaps as the audience willed him on. Cameron is not the perfect speech-giver, he’s a footballer and a genuine guy who wants to run a project and help others – the talk he gave however was truly inspiring, what he said was real and from the heart. Cameron was not the most polished or experienced speaker on the day but by far his courage and simple, honest words made him stand out from the crowd. As a youth worker myself this is what I really love to see, and I’m sure if I asked the audience there many would agree with me. Getting up in front of that many people and delivering such a successful and inspiring talk was a massive achievement, despite being nervous Cameron still stood in the line of fire – a sign of real integrity and courage. Perhaps Cameron is not the ‘finished article’ right now, but given time and the right support from youth services he can hone his skills, improve his understanding and develop into an outstanding leader of the future – a diamond in the rough will still always sparkle, in the right light…
With funding from vCashpoint Cameron, a semi pro footballer uses his spare time voluntarily (yes, voluntarily) not for money or fame, to teach kids how to play football and he’s willing to go out and put his neck on the line promoting his work to a room full of strangers. At 21 Cameron is teaching kids and working in the community and showing that he really wants to make a difference….
This is what youth work is all about to me, this is what the future of youth services are: providing a service for young people across the country who like Cameron, want to make a difference but need some direction and support in doing so. All young people, regardless of their background should be given the opportunity and support necessary to help others. At the end of the day, l say we keep the young people in mind, keep the young people at the forefront of our services and make sure that we are there for the young people who need us most…Words: Gary Brunskill (v20 Support Worker)
Were you at the event? Do you know an unsung hero like Cameron? Why not share your thoughts with us….
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By Jemima Jordan 5th October 10
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Today might seem like any old rainy Tuesday, but let me tell you folks, it’s not! On this day only I’m back for one more little blog to mark the launch of our new campaign, Make the Team!
Make the Team is a project encouraging you and everyone you know between the ages of 16-25 to volunteer in football-related projects. In addition, everyone who volunteers will be in with a chance to win tickets to see Premier League Clubs! We’ve got professionals aplenty on board, from David Seaman to Kieran Gibbs, who all want you to get involved in amazing football-related volunteering projects like these!
The campaign launched on this very day and in order to make uber impact, we have some radio ads, featuring none other than the lovely gents who commentate on Sky Sports! Martin Tyler, Andy Gray and Chris Kamara, who you may know for hilarious moments such as this classic, spent a sunny and energy-filled morning in a London studio in Soho recording the radio ads that you will soon hear on Choice, Galaxy, Capital and XFM and I was lucky enough to be there to witness it!
I can tell you now, they had a lot of banter in the studio and although much of the football chat went over my head (Sorry football fans, I am embarrassingly knowledge-less), they knew their stuff like you wouldn’t believe. They were also upliftingly enthusiastic about volunteering and Make the Team project, with Martin Tyler saying ‘volunteering can give you skills and experience which could help you secure your dream job’ and Chris Kamara saying that ‘Make the Team is one of the best things I’ve heard about for a long time’.
So if you fancy getting involved, in the words of Andy Gray: ‘Sign up with v and be part of something big. If you’re football mad like me there’s hundreds of ways you can get involved.’And if you want to see more from the gents, scroll down for photos and CLICK HERE for a video from Chris Kamara
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