Tranmere Rovers are more than a Football Club, and it runs a strong NCS programme for 15-17-year-olds who want to better not just themselves, but their local Wirral community.
TRIC’s NCS scheme helps over 200 teenagers, and recently had three groups over the 2019 summer holidays which was led by NCS Project Co-Ordinator Mamudo Dabo.
Raising just under £7,000 for the likes of local charities such as the Alder Hey Children’s Hospice, the NCS students got up to plenty of beneficial activities during their three-week programme.
The programme has proved a success on the Wirral, attracting new groups of teenagers who want to experience something new outside of a classroom environment.
To coincide with iWill week, an initiative that aims to encourage young people under 20 to participate in community and social action, with four in 10 currently taking part, Dabo explained how the Club’s NCS programme has had a positive impact.
Dabo said: “My job involves planning and delivering the programme and getting stuff in place to get young people on board and make sure that we are successful.
“Being an NCS graduate myself as well, it is a highly beneficial programme obviously because when you go on it, you go there not knowing anyone and without communication skills, once you’ve gone on a programme and you’ve learnt to mature yourself in all aspects as well as learning and developing new skills.
“The major part is giving back to your community and making change.
“Obviously being young myself, this summer gone was my first chance of leading a programme of this magnitude and being the person behind the scenes, to see how much they have gone and helped our community was something to admire really.
“We had a group that went out and did a beach clean, and we had a group that did a fundraiser night for Alder Hey Children’s Hospice and loads of other things that they went out of their way to do.”
In their first week, the NCS participants travelled to Derbyshire to partake in a residential at Buxton Oaklands.
Throughout their second week, life skills were developed through a stay at the University of Chester, while a third week was helping give back to the local community and TRIC.
Following the competition of the NCS programme, students were able to enjoy a Graduation Ceremony to celebrate their participation.
And Dabo was proud of the work that the NCS participants achieved with their community work.
He added: “They did a massive job for the community and a massive job for Tranmere Rovers In the Community as well, how they went out of their way to help the disability coaching sessions and dementia sessions.
“In total we raised, from a group of 211 in three phases, we raised just below £7,000, so that’s something great to see people of that age, 15-17, really going out and thinking about their community and their way to make a change speaks a volume, and with Tranmere being a community Club, and those young people a part of that Tranmere badge, it speaks a lot about the Club.
“The programme enables young people to go out there and get ready for their adult life which maybe university and their adult working life.
“It is all about the power of youth, they are changing their lives and the community for the better, which makes them proud and their family proud and I think it’s great.”
To find out more about #iwill week, please CLICK HERE.