Since the middle of January, 11 Year 9 students have been taking part in the “Leeds Girls Can” initiative. Leeds Girls Can are a team of women who are here to empower and support females between the ages of 14 – 60. They primarily focus on the use of physical activity to provide opportunities to create sustainable activities for women and girls.
Leeds Girls Can offer a wide range of programmes, one of which is the “Young Ambassador” programme which our students were lucky enough to take part in. This programme mainly targets students with low self-esteem or those that have a negative relationship with physical activity. However, the cohort we chose had a wide range of reasons they were taking part.
Throughout the weeks, our students continued to impress School staff, the Leeds Girls Can staff and the staff supporting from the various places we visited due to their impeccable behaviour and manners, willingness to participate and overall vibrancy they brought to everything they did.
Every week our students were able to engage in a new activity ranging from team building games in a sports hall to Bouldering at the Climbing Lab in Kirkstall and even Ice skating at the newly opened Planet Ice at Elland Road.
It really was an absolute pleasure to work with Leeds Girls Can and the cohort of students, seeing them grow from strength to strength taking part in every activity and challenge they were faced with and seeing their confidence in their own ability grow every week was absolutely fantastic.
I hope the students that took part are using everything they learnt during this process to further promote the positive attitude towards physical activity they have developed to become advocates for sport within school.