EMPLOYMENT
Above: A young sport leader. Right: Successful Active Trowbridge apprentices
England (ABAE) has just employed its first boxing apprentices, to work along- side ABAE boxing development officers in hard to reach communities. Eventually the boxing apprentices will take coaching, judging, refereeing and sports develop- ment awards, on six-month placements. “Young people have been a real
casualty of the recession,” says Jack Shakespeare, training manager, at Fit for Sport, which took on 180 young- sters last month. “While employers recognise the benefits of bringing on the next generation of the workforce, for many the cost of training new staff in those first few months before they can actively contribute to the business can be prohibitive.” The National Skills Academy has
secured funding from the National Ap- prenticeship Service to fund the first three months wages of 1,400 young peo- ple, but the FJF is not the only mechanism by which young people are being encour- aged into the workplace through sport.
In Aylesbury, the Mandeville Sports
College has set up and funded a project with the local authority and a nearby healthy living centre to get unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds learning, volunteer- ing and working through sport. Seven young people in Tyne and Wear have already found employment in the sports industry after completing a similar three-month rugby and working course, and Get on Track, run by the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust with Comic Relief funding, works with Connexions teams to identify youngsters who could benefit from sports industry placements and advice from elite sports mentors. “These youngsters have a huge
amount of potential, I can see it in their eyes,” says Dame Kelly, “they just haven’t had the right opening yet. They might not have academic qualifications, but they have all the other skills to suc- ceed. Give them the opportunity to gain constructive experience and who knows where they could go.”
With new pathways in
place many young people can take the vocational route to reach their potential
Leaders in Sport
Vocational and leadership courses have been offering a practical and technical introduction to working in the sports industry, while children over the age of 16 can take coaching and activity leadership awards that give them a start in the industry. Sports Leaders UK trains thousands
of young sports leaders every year and in the run up to the Olympics, the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust and LOCOG’s London 2012 Young Lead- ers programme will encourage sporty youngsters to volunteer in their commu- nities and at the Games itself. Organisations like crime reduction
charity Nacro and Cricket for Change, a charity that delivers cricket in disadvan- taged London communities, have long encouraged young people to train as lead- ers and coaches to sustain activity. Young catering, construction, IT and sports de- velopment volunteers are helping cricket clubs thanks to the England and Wales Cricket Board’s V-Cricket project. So the next generation of young sport
stars are earning their place in the sports industry, but the need to look to all sections of society for talent is best illus- trated by Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting. After leaving school at 16, he worked as an assistant groundsman at a school in Launceston and on the score- board during Tasmania’s Sheffield Shield games. Then after graduating from the Australian Institute of Sport’s Cricket Academy, he played for the state and fi- nally the national team. When veteran skipper Steve Waugh re-
tired in 2004, Ponting was chosen as the first Tasmanian cricket captain of Aus- tralia, and is known as an intelligent and thoughtful cricketer, who would make an excellent coach or commentator. With the new pathways in place, many
others can now take the vocational route to reach their potential. ●
Crispin Andrews is a freelance writer
48 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
Issue 2 2010 © cybertrek 2010
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