Newcastle United's Laura Wilson sees how Premier Skills is training grassroots coaches in Egypt.

Meet Laura

Laura Wilson, Newcastle United's Community Projects Co-ordinator, got to see first-hand how the Premier Skills programme is changing lives in North Africa.

Laura, 26, (pictured above, left) was selected to go on a six-day trip to Egypt in January 2018 to take a leading role in the delivery of the Premier Skills programme in Hurghada, which saw her work alongside a Premier League Coach Educator and other UK club coaches to run intensive training for 36 grassroots coaches from across the country.

Premier Skills is a global coaching and referee development programme run by the Premier League and the British Council, and to date, has trained more than 20,000 coaches and referees in 29 countries.

Supported by the Ministry for Sport in Egypt, this Premier Skills course saw UK club coaches provide face-to-face training and education materials to participants who are then able to use and share their newly acquired skills to develop and co-ordinate projects in their own schools and communities.

Laura was thrilled to pass on her knowledge and skills in order to help community development in Egypt.

"It was an amazing experience and one I am so thrilled to have taken part in," she explains. "We focused on empowering female coaches as we want to make football more widely available to everybody.

"The local coaches and players I spoke to were absolutely amazed the Premier League were trying to help improve their footballing knowledge. This scheme will not only make better footballers and better coaches, but the health and safety and wellbeing of young Egyptian players, and especially women, can only get better because of this idea.

"It was an absolute privilege to be involved."

Through Premier Skills young people, often including the most vulnerable in society, are given opportunities to become more involved with their local communities, improve their employability and raise their self-esteem.