Under 30s are a significant proportion of active football supporters, but are unrepresented in the game's democratic structures. How can we get more young people to participate in supporters organisations and their football clubs? Fulham's Her Game Too Ambassador and Lillies Co-Founder, Amelia Armstrong, headed to Brussels to find out:
Recently I had the opportunity to take part in the first face-to-face meet for the Future of Football project, representing the Football Supporters' Association. There were multiple representatives from Supporters" Associations across Europe & Africa, including representatives from Sweden, Spain, The Netherlands, and Tunisia.
The project is part of Football Supporters' Europe, and the aim is to understand how to involve more youth, specifically under-30s in the democratic processes of football. Football has a huge lack of youth representation in its supporter's groups, especially within the U.K., and this project is hoping to understand why, so we can home to remedy this.
On arriving in Brussels, we undertook 2 days' worth of workshops, with the aim of developing a toolkit which can be utilised by supporters' groups. We heard incredible stories about youth participation from Swedish representatives, and how their clubs operate schemes to encourage more children and teenagers to get involved in the club on a deeper level.
Whilst this project is still in its infancy, it has an incredibly exciting future ahead of it. Through understanding why youth in democratic processes are so underrepresented, we can begin to tackle this and encourage more Under 30s to be involved in our Supporters' Groups, whether it be as members, or running for positions such as board members.
I am incredibly proud to be able to influence the development of this project.
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