Reading FC
Full-day anti-racism event for 120+ young people with Reading FC
Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC) worked in partnership with Reading FC Community Trust to organise a full day educational event for young people from local schools on Tuesday 23rd October.
Over 120 Year 5&6 pupils were able to participate in workshops from SRtRC; looking at stereotyped how they are formed and exploring a definition of racism; from Reading FC Community Trust, a workshop on healthy eating; a tour of the Madejski Stadium; and a fun football session in the Community Trust’s indoor dome led by RFC CT coaches.
The workshops ran during the morning and afternoon and the young people certainly seemed to enjoy the day, participating readily and engaging well with all the sessions.
Following the completion of the workshops all the school groups reconvened on the 4g indoor pitch in the dome to put their questions on racism to a panel of very special guests.
Two of Reading FC’s first team players Jobi McAnuff and Mikele Leigertwood were able to attend to the delight of the all the audience, joining a panel that included SRtRC patrons Paul Mortimer & Anwar Uddin, who were both involved in the workshop delivery and Iffy Onoura, now working for the PFA.
There was no shortage of questions on racism from the young people and the panel’s three favourite questions were from Emily who asked ‘How do you feel when someone is racist’, from Lewis who asked ‘Have you ever been racist?’ and Jade who asked ‘Have you ever seen someone be racist and not done anything about it?’. Emily, Lewis and Jade were rewarded with SRtRC T-shirts, mini footballs, wristbands and badges.
Following the Q&A Mikele had to leave, but Jobi stayed to join the young people in seeing a screening of the new SRtRC DVD, which was well received. Jobi was also kind enough to stay and sign autographs for all the young people on a Reading FC team photograph. All of the attendees were able to leave with a SRtRC goody bag as a memento of the day.
Show Racism the Red Card would like to thank all of the panellists and players for attending and participating and Reading FC Community Trust for organising the day, particularly RFC Social Inclusion Officer Gary Webb for all of his hard work. SRtRC look forward to working with the club and Trust in the future.
You can read about how the Reading FC website reported on the event here.