During Levelling the Playing Field’s ‘Sport for Development’ month in December, we’re asking our specialist partners how they use sport and physical activity to deliver positive outcomes for ethnically diverse children in their communities.

Rotherham United Community Sports Trust (RUCST) operate two Levelling the Playing Field sessions with children from ethnically diverse communities. Football and boxing are the ‘hooks’, but their purpose goes deeper than just getting kids involved in physical activity.

A boys’ football session at a new football facility in Eastwood, north east of Rotherham town centre, offers free diversionary sport activity, but also seeks to address wider issues happening in the community.

The ethnically diverse area has a problem with gangs segregated by nationality. Czechs and Slovaks, for example, live in the same neighbourhood and frequently clash.

RUCST has a partnership with local schools and runs alternative provision sessions for pupils who need additional support. They deliver workshops on knife crime, hate crime, child sexual exploitation, gambling and gaming and then signpost children to the football session taking place on their doorstep.

There, rival gangs are brought together and playing side-by-side on the football pitch.

RUCST Inclusion Manager, Ant Bayou, says: “We use that session as a reward scheme for good behaviour at school but also as an opportunity to bring communities that live close together into a session that integrates them into society and gives them rules which they might not get at home. It’s an opportunity to foster cohesion where there are existing issues.”

Ant explains that many of the children are from families with siblings or parents already involved in criminal activity and they can be “easily led”. Although these negative role models in their lives can make it difficult to intervene and change children’s entrenched behaviour patterns, RUCST are doing their utmost to put programmes in place, using sport as the engagement tool.

“We find the communities we work with are very protective of the information they share,” says Ant. “They’re not very open with their feelings or attitudes towards work or school.

“We find it quite difficult to get them out of that [their situations] which is why we hope that the more they come along to the Levelling the Playing Field sessions, the more we can build that rapport.”

“The Rotherham United badge on our tracksuit plays a massive role. It helps us stand out and is a point of connection with these communities.

“The brand-new football facility at Eastwood is also a big pull. Kids walk past it on the way home from school and might feel they don’t have access to it due to expense, but we can open it up to them for free.”

RUCST invite South Yorkshire Police and Fire Brigade to attend sessions and engage young people, educating them around various types of crime and consequences.

The workshops that Ant and his team deliver in local schools transfers to the football pitch. Coaching staff ask children to pass on the information they’ve learned earlier that day to their team-mates.

RUCST’s other Levelling the Playing Field session is a girls’ boxing group that takes place at Rotherham United’s New York Stadium. It’s diversionary activity for around 20 girls from the community. Terri Harper, a local pro boxer, frequently joins in and is a role model to the participants.

The organisation’s work perfectly aligns with Levelling the Playing Field’s common goals:

• Increase the number of ethnically diverse children taking part in sport and physical activity
• Prevent and divert ethnically diverse children from being involved in the Criminal Justice System

Ant feels his support for his beneficiaries in the Levelling the Playing Field sessions and other projects has been augmented by enrolling on Levelling the Playing Field’s mentoring training.

“I’ve found it really insightful and it has helped my development as a person,” he states. “I’ve done my youth work and coaching qualifications so it’s another string to my bow and adds new dynamics to me working with young people.”

Read more about the work of Rotherham United Community Sports Trust here.