When Kutetana Tunga decided that there was something missing in his Shoreditch community in 1998, he took matters into his own hands and set up the Shoreditch Youth Football Club. By enabling young people to get involved in sport with the support of local volunteers, he hoped to build a sense of community that would benefit everybody in the area, and in particular the young people.
Building Community Spirit through Football
Since Tunga started the club from scratch nine years ago, member numbers have soared from 14 to over 60 today, with three full teams and reserves. As manager and secretary of Shoreditch Youth Football Club, Kutetana Tunga, or Tunga as he likes to be known, oversees seven volunteers, without whom he says “the club simply wouldn’t work.”
The secret of the success of Shoreditch Youth Football Club is largely attributable to Tunga’s passion and ongoing commitment to improving the club’s facilities and gaining new members. Crucially, Tunga recognises the vital role that volunteers play in the progression of the club and the importance of keeping them motivated. He realises that this can be achieved by providing volunteers with the opportunity to learn new skills, thus increasing their areas of expertise and responsibility, and by rewarding them frequently.
Working with Local Schools
Upon hearing about the runningsports workshop ‘Developing Partnerships with Clubs & Schools,’ Tunga saw an opportunity to learn how to encourage even more young people to join the Shoreditch Club and maximise the opportunities for them to progress in sport from schools to clubs. He says, “As soon as I heard about the workshop I thought it would be very beneficial as I could bring what I learned there back to the Club and help it to progress further.”
The workshop that Tunga attended reinforced the importance of building relationships with local schools and other clubs. It provided him with the skills and confidence to identify ways in which to work with them most effectively and to create a plan for approaching potential partners.
Tunga explains some of the tangible differences the workshop has made to Shoreditch Youth Football Club: “Having built up relations with neighbouring schools, our volunteers can now visit them to encourage pupils to join our training sessions. As a result, the quality of training and attendance levels at sessions has improved and the number of members at the club continues to rise steadily.”
From Shoreditch to West Ham!
“Whilst in many cases our aim is simply providing young people in our community with organised opportunities to play and enjoy football at club level, our intention is also to prepare as many of our club members as possible for entry into larger, professional clubs. Thanks to the runningsports workshop, we now have a clear plan in place to achieve this. We’ve just formed a partnership with West Ham’s Academy, so I’m looking forward to learning from the experts at professional club level and being able to pass on this expertise to my club staff and members. I’m also confident our affiliation with the Academy will encourage even more young people to join Shoreditch.”
Tunga goes on to say, “My advice to sports clubs out there looking to grow is to take part in a runningsports workshop – you’ll learn a lot and it can change the way you run your club. My main reason for going to the workshop was to learn about developing partnerships with schools and other clubs but I also learned about recruiting and keeping volunteers and attracting more club members. And it’s not just the tutors who you’ll learn from – I learned a lot from the other volunteers and managers participating in the workshop who face similar problems to me, regardless of which sport they specialise in.”
If you’re involved with a club that needs to know more about working with local schools, recruiting and keeping volunteers, increasing its memberships, raising funds, or working up a club development plan, Tunga proves it really is possible to make substantial changes with relative ease with the support of runningsports.
