Amidst the EFL’s Together Against Racism campaign, the Trust has provided an insight into their work to combat racism within the community.
Deputy head of community at the Trust, Keith Jackson, said: “Historically, it’s something we’ve been a big part of. Our PSHE delivery in local schools has been around equality and to BAME participants and how in society we can do a bit to try and break down those barriers and promote equality.
“At the moment, as part of the Premier League Primary Stars project, we’re running No Room for Racism workshops across a number of our partner schools.
“It’s an anti-discrimination campaign launched by the Premier League and that’s about addressing racism and promoting equality in football and obviously within wider society as well.
“October is Black History Month, so we’re focused our No Room for Racism campaign right now, celebrating diversity, the importance not only of being against discrimination, but actually standing against discrimination.
“Assemblies at schools are really important. I think when you go in wearing the track suit and you’ve got the club badge on, you have a responsibility to promote messages like this.
“I think it does carry weight when the local football club gets behind projects like this and we can use the power of the badge and the power of the game to try and support education and get kids talking about a topic that’s really important.
“Obviously, Chesterfield as a town statistically isn’t the most diverse and I think that shows and really echoes why we should be involved in doing an education piece like this because when you don’t see diversity then you probably don’t understand the impact of things that you might hear and things that you might say.”
For more information, please contact: alyssjackson@spireitestrust.org.uk