PREMIER LEAGUE AND BRITISH COUNCIL LAUNCH INNOVATIVE NEW COACHING PROJECT IN KAMPALA

Former Premier League football star Warren Barton will tomorrow lead a Premier League coaching team in Kampala, Uganda, to officially roll-out ‘Premier Skills’, a new initiative from the Premier League and the British Council that uses football as a tool for skills and community development. The project, which includes support from local partners, will work with a number of young people to enhance their football coaching skills and develop their English language ability.

For the Premier League, Premier Skills represents its flagship international development programme and the Kampala visit follows extremely successful pilots in Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt and Delhi and Kolkata in India. The pilots were led by Barton and his ex Wimbledon colleague Robbie Earle and a follow up evaluation has found that 19 of the original participants in Egypt have already secured jobs delivering community football coaching as a result of the face to face training that they received.

With this successful model in place, Kampala will be the first of a number of projects rolled out across Africa, India, China and South East Asia between now and 2010.

The Kampala project kicks off tomorrow and, along with Barton, will include sessions from Jerome John, Liam Redican and Paul Hughes, all Premier League coaches from West Ham, Everton and Reading respectively. Local partners - The Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA), The National Council for Sports, Kampala Kids League and the Edgars Youth Academy - are helping to deliver the project on the ground and both GTV and UBC are local media partners.

As part of the training component of the course, participants will be able to develop their English language skills and subsequently build upon these using the suite of Premier Skills multi-media English language materials, including the British Council’s dedicated education resource website www.britishcouncil.org/PremierSkills

Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore said:

“Following the impact of the successful pilot projects in Egypt and India I am thrilled to see that Premier Skills is rolling-out in Uganda. The Premier League and our Clubs have a long-held commitment for investing in community and education projects and given our

popularity internationally we feel it is only right to take this approach to a wider community.”

‘The Premier League is hugely popular all over Africa, particularly in Uganda. It is important that we use this profile and reach to encourage and engage communities – the roll-out of Premier Skills will help do just that. Our partnership with the British Council, using top coaches like Warren Barton and Robbie Earle, will help develop the skills of local youth leaders for the long term benefit of their communities.’

British Council Chair, Lord Kinnock, said:

“This is a truly exciting, creative initiative. Football transcends race and language among people everywhere. By putting the British Council’s experience and global network together with the Premier League’s great know-how, we can reach countless young people and help to enhance their skills on the pitch, their self-development, and their understanding of other cultures.”