Earlier this week, The Albion Foundation hosted their PL Kicks Girls’ Camp, centred around Black History Month 2024.
George Salter Academy, Sandwell opened its gates to local female footballers, with the purpose of them enjoying an active football environment whilst learning about Black History and heritage.
Female Engagement Lead, Aaliyah Browne believes the day went successfully, and that participants enjoyed learning about this years’ theme of Reclaiming Narratives.
“Today is all about celebrating culture and diversity and celebrating Black heritage,” Browne said. “It’s really important to celebrate Black History Month for these girls, as it's important that we represent everyone within the community.
“As we know already, Sandwell is quite a diverse community, so it's important that we represent everybody that is within it. The day is going really well so far, so in the morning we've done a lot of football activities.
“We've been blasting some tunes, which has really made the atmosphere really good. And then we're just about to have lunch, and at lunch time we're going to do a little quiz as well regarding Black History Month.
“So each group will have a team that they're going to represent. So we've got Barbados, Nigeria, Jamaica and Zimbabwe, the teams will be working together to win the tournament and represent that country.
“The girls have been really good today. There's been a lot of engagement throughout and it's been a lot of socialising a lot of competition between the girls but in a good way.
“It's just been really good. A lot of girls have been really excited because they actually get to represent the countries. I know that there are a few girls here that have seen the flags and they've been able to, hold them up and represent their heritage, which has been really nice.
“That's essentially what we want to do today, we want to represent and we want to make sure that everybody's involved in what we do.”
The Camp appeared to be a hit with participants too, with plenty of smiles on faces, and many delighted to represent and learn more about their heritage.
“We’ve done: dribbling and we've been doing some penalty shootouts,” Khadijah, a participant said. “We've been holding flags and taking pictures.
“I enjoyed it a hundred out of ten. I really loved that so much that I would love to come back and do it again.”
“We’ve been doing a shootout and a treasure hunt, we’ve been playing lots of fun games,” Zainab, another participant said. “I’ve learnt a few different things today and really enjoyed it.”
You can find out more about our regular PL Kicks sessions HERE.