Rashid Bhayat is Development Manager for Sports Social Inclusion at Coventry City Council, and has worked in the field of inclusion and sport for more than a decade.
How would you describe the work you do?
The organisation I work for has existed, in various guises for over ten years, and we have worked with Kick It Out from our inception. We manage a range of community sports programmes in Coventry, using sport in its widest sense, and mainly football to encourage participation in priority neighbourhoods.
Our work takes the form of structured football programmes, and the Kick It Out message is central to our aims. The message is ingrained in the work we do, and is shown in the fact that our activities are open to all ethnicities.
We have a diverse mix of ethnicities, which is something we constantly celebrate through our partnership with Kick It Out. We ensure that the message of diversity and cohesion is visible through all the work we do.
How did you first get involved in the work you do?
I first took an interest in this work after I left full-time education at the age of 16, and, as I was aware of Kick It Out, I thought it could be worth contacting them for some advice.
I saw straight away that there was a clear lack of sports provision for young people in the Coventry area, and wanted to find a way to remedy the problem.
Kick It Out put me in touch with some of the relevant contacts for the area, and supplied with me some basic resources to help me get started. Twelve years later I feel like we’ve made some genuine progress in the area.
So how does your organisation connect with young people?
The programmes are all community-based, and the sessions take place in heart of community. We don’t expect anyone to have to travel too far, and it’s important for them to have provision on their doorstep, seven days a week.
All our programmes are delivered by trained coaches, and the vast majority of them are ex-participants who have subsequently been trained professionally. Coaches are given FA Level One coaching and youth training. In addition, all our coaches are local and from the community, and subsequently they are very aware of the issues the community faces.
How have Kick It Out helped you?
Kick It out enabled us to utilise the positive message of inclusion, and the contacts they had already established were crucial. In recent years, Kick It Out have provided us with numerous opportunities to give talks about our work and deliver our message.
In five years time where do you see yourself and your organisation?
Hopefully we will continue to progress, continue to be out there in the way that we are and carry our work into more areas. I would hope that our process of training and educating young people to deliver the project will continue to flourish. Ideally, I would like us to have secured long-term funding pots, as we have been forced to survive year to year for twelve years, and uncertainty never helps in planning.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to replicate the work you do?
Keep it local, you have to start locally and not think too far ahead. Concentrate on a small patch and learn your lessons. Wherever you go there are going to be challenges, but a lot of them will be similar no matter where you are. Get to grips with one area first, and don’t try and take on too much initially.
Use local people, because they know the kids and the communities. They are the experts when it comes to issues in that area.
Think as wide as you can with regards to partnerships. Aim to work with local authorities, councils, the police. These large organisations need grassroots people to work with them to deliver their targets. The worst thing that can happen is they say no.
