Asians Getting United at Luton - 31st March 2005

For those of you not aware of who Luton United are, it is the name of a scheme backed by Luton Borough Council to support and encourage Asian youngsters to get involved in the beautiful game.

We spoke to Butch Sasal one of the founders and coaches of Luton United FC about the project.

"I work as a coach in Luton and saw that Asian lads were severely under-represented in football even though we have a large football club on our doorstep.

"I discovered there were around 10 schools where 60 per cent of pupils were from ethnic minorities so I got together with some like minded colleagues to set up a forum and put together a report.

"The difficulty for us was that those schools focused on academics, not sports. Many have a large proportion of pupils with English as a second language, which puts them under pressure, so sports get left behind. Often the PE curriculum wasn’t delivered with great commitment or will. There was no dialogue with children to see what they wanted."

"We do coaching session at schools and when pupils see role models from their ethnic background, it makes them think ‘I can do that.’ We got involved in mentoring at schools through the personal social health curriculum. We can give guidance to pupils on issues they may not be able to discuss with teachers or parents.

"Another project we have set up is a football festival which we take to schools which don't have football. The best thing about the project is seeing how children's confidence and self esteem has leapt as a result.

"When you are working with children from ethnic minorities, you need to get the community behind you. In our culture, there are certain views about sports and people have a stereotype about Asians not being into football. Also Asian children don’t have the same freedoms as others for cultural reasons, so parents need reassurance that what we are doing is a good thing for their children to be involved in. We are lucky that this year, a major Asian business agreed to sponsor us.

Asian girls in Luton will soon be able to ‘bend it like Beckham’ thanks to Luton United FC which is planning to launch its own girls team.

"You need strong foundations and a long term strategy to keep a project like this going because it involves a lot of hard work and time. You also need to liven it up with fresh ideas. The next projects we are looking at is setting up an Asian girls team.

"Funding is important because Luton is a working class area with many parents are on benefits. There is a lot of admin and paperwork involved, but you learn as you go along.

"Networking is useful and I am happy to give my time to advise people on setting up similar projects. The Football Association and the council have been very helpful.

The teams have gone from strength to strength. We won a national award from the Football Association for work with ethnic minorities.

"Our ethos is equality so we are open to children from all backgrounds, black, Asian and white. That’s why we called the team Luton United. It’s about the whole town being united to support us."