The Footballer with Sunny Sahota
AWARD winning international Bhangra singer, H Dhami undertook a coaching session with students from a Birmingham school to kick start the One Game One Game Community initiative in the city.
The singer put students from Ryder Green Primary School through their paces as part of the One Game One Community initiative which has a strong community focus and celebrates the contribution made to football by Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities whilst continuing the call for equality.
The One Game One Game Community initiative is just one aspect of the national Kick It Out annual week of action which will take place in October.
H carried out the coaching session with the aid of West Bromwich Albion’s UEFA Hatrick Officer Dave Lawrence. To support the session The FA’s Brendon Batson was present as well as Zakir Adam from Kick It Out, Aston Villa Football Clubs Marketing Executive Ravi Masih, and the BCFA’s Football Development Manager Natalie Justice.
H Dhami said ‘It has been a privilege to mark the start of the Kick It Out week of action in Birmingham today and take part in a coaching session here at Ryders Green Primary School. I am fully in support of the One Game One Community initiative as I feel strongly that there is absolutely no place for racism in football and in the community as a whole. To come today and to show my support to this campaign will hopefully encourage kids to acknowledge this initiative as well as inspiring kids from the BME community to Get Into Football ’
As a follow up to the coaching session H also helped lead a classroom session which addressed important issues of race by giving the kids an opportunity to design their own One Game One Community T-shirts.
H added ‘The T-Shirts that the kids designed were fantastic and really got them to fully interact with the One Game One Community campaign and show off their brilliant artistic skills, which I have to add matches their brilliant footballing skills that they showed me earlier. Under the right guidance I believe that we may have a number of top notch coaches and footballers in the making here.’
The BCFA’s Football Development Manager Natalie Justice added ‘ Today has been fantastic for the kids to have such a inspirational positive role model of H Dhami to kick start the One Game One Community campaign in Birmingham and address the important issues behind the initiative of race’
‘We are looking towards carrying out further sessions with H in order to continue the call to encourage kids from all corners of the community to Get Into Football as part of our wider remit.‘
For more information on TheFA’s Get into Football campaign please visit www.TheFA.com. For further information on the One game One Community week of action please visit www.kickitout.org
