Swansea City Foundation PL Inspires participants take part in Project Development Day at Vicarage Road

Premier League Inspires participants from Pontarddulais Comprehensive School represented Swansea City AFC Foundation at the Premier League Inspires Social Action Challenge Project Development Day at Watford’s Vicarage Road on Tuesday.

The four pupils from Pontarddulais Comprehensive School were successful in the Foundation's local heats which asked students to come up with ideas to make football clubs greener. The students created a plan for the ‘Kick-off cup’, a reusable matchday cup which would reduce the amount of plastic waste on matchdays while also reducing all other single use plastic.

As winners, they were given the opportunity to represent the club and Foundation at the event in Watford and joined representatives from nine other football clubs as part of the Project Development Day which provided all young people in attendance with the opportunity to further bring their ideas to life.

The day included a stadium tour as well as workshops on sustainability and storytelling which were designed to help the students learn how to present their ideas.

Curtis Grant, education manager at the Foundation, said: “The pupils have been exceptional throughout the whole process, they have identified a real-life issue with a great solution to tackling sustainability in their local community. They have been a credit to their school throughout and have represented us superbly, they should be proud of their work so far. Hopefully this is just the start!”

Laura Wilcox, a teacher at Pontarddulais Comprehensive School, added: “The carefully planned workshops allowed the pupils to share ideas, research what other clubs are doing to become more sustainable and delve deeper into tackling the use of single use plastic at the Swansea.com Stadium. It was a pleasure to see so many young people from all clubs being the driving force for change.”