Collective Conversation: Helping I Speak Football Design a Pilot for Women

Earlier this year, as part of Affleck & Co.'s Impact Hour series, we were paired with

Mark Lewis and Najma Elmi at I Speak Football. They run a programme that brings

together language learning, football and community for refugee and asylum-seeking people, which has built a strong track record with young men. We were there to help them think through their next step and how they might develop a version of the programme designed for women.

The organisation has plenty of momentum behind it. They had successfully secured

funding from GOALS matched-funding and a National Lottery grant, and local

partners in Brent, including UCFB, Wembley Stadium Foundation and Brent Council,

are backing the next stage of growth. Mark and Najma wanted help working out what a women's pilot should look like, given that refugee and asylum-seeking women often face different barriers to getting involved than the young men the programme was originally built around.

Mandu Reid helped us prepare for the session, working through the shape of the

conversation and the questions worth asking, though she wasn't able to join the call

itself. That preparation meant we could get past the basics quickly and spend the

hour on the real question: the programme has never excluded women, but it hasn't

been built with them in mind either.

We talked through two types of barriers. The practical ones, like venue, timing,

transport, childcare and safety. And the harder to see ones, like confidence in

football environments, language confidence, mixed-gender dynamics, cultural

expectations, trauma-informed needs, and whether women feel they belong there at all. The practical barriers are usually easier to solve. Building trust and a sense of

belonging takes longer and needs to be planned for from the start.

We then worked through what a women's pilot could actually look like: women-only

sessions, female coaches and facilitators, venues that feel safe before they feel

sporty, and language learning built into the activity rather than added on afterwards. We also talked about what the pilot should be trying to learn rather than just deliver, questions like whether a women-only format increases participation, what role football plays compared with social connection, and what actually helps build trust.

Towards the end of the hour we talked about the Advisory Board and how it could

contribute more than sign-off. It can help stress-test the pilot design, spot barriers the team might have missed, and open up referral routes, but only if it is brought into the design work early rather than shown a finished plan.

By the end of the session we had the outline of a pilot concept, a shortlist of learning questions, and a plan for involving the Advisory Board and women with lived experience in the next stage, including a workshop pencilled in for 27 March. We wrote this up afterwards into a set of practical next steps: confirming the shape of that workshop, mapping referral routes through hotels, ESOL colleges and

community organisations, and starting delivery in community venues before

introducing sports environments once trust has had time to build.

What struck us most was how clearly Mark and Najma could see the gap they were

trying to close. I Speak Football already knows its model works. The women's pilot is

a chance to build on that carefully, with the team going in aware of what they don't

yet know rather than guessing.

If you would like to know more about I Speak Football or how you might support the

women's pilot, their team would be glad to hear from you. And if you would like to

find out more about the Impact Series and how Affleck & Co. could help your

organisation, get in touch by email.

Written by Ruth Shaw & Mandu Reid