West Ham United Foundation has once again reached the Premier League Enterprise Challenge Final.
Having qualified for this year’s play-offs, students from Chobham Academy had the opportunity to represent the Foundation at the Emirates Stadium in the hope of reaching the final in London.
The business and education based challenge is run by the Premier League and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) which this year tasked pupils with working on a strategy to help increase the number of families attending match days.
Twenty-six schools and community groups representing Premier League and Football League Clubs, made it through to this year’s play-offs which have been hosted by Stoke City, Manchester United and now Arsenal.
Seven of these groups, including the Foundation, have now progressed to the final, where they will go head-to-head to pitch their ideas to personnel from the world of sport and business at the prestigious BIS Conference Centre in Westminster on Monday 27 April.
The Foundation representatives saw off stiff competition from Chelsea, Norwich, Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and Tottenham, to be crowned joint-winners along with Fulham, while Crystal Palace secured the wildcard position.
Kevin Plumb, Head of Legal - Corporate and Commercial Affairs at the Premier League was one of four judges to put the Hammers through, citing their delivery and innovative ideas as their standout traits.
“They showed a great level of passion and the girls woke everyone in the room up with their presentation," he explanied. "Excellent, sophisticated membership model, which looks to try and get every tier of family into the stadium.”
The young Foundation team, comprised of Frankie Walker, Christine Babalola and Konnie Toyin presented a range of initiatives to grow and sustain family attendance levels including how and to whom they will be marketed.
Toyin spoke of the lessons she had learnt during the qualifying process.
“Just to be confident and believe in yourself," she added. "There were a lot of really great ideas and we believed ours were strong and that if we let our personalities shine through our presentation, we’d have a good chance of getting to the final.”
It marks another success for the Foundation, having won the Premier League Enterprise Challenge last year with a team from one of its Premier League Kicks projects.
As part of their prize, the previous winners were invited to a reception at Number 10 Downing Street to meet Lord Young, an advisor to the Prime Minister on small business and enterprise, while they also presented their ideas to West Ham Joint-Chairman David Gold at the House of Commons.
Foundation Senior Community Sports Development Officer, Shamajul Motin was delighted with the manner in which his team conducted themselves throughout.
"We were worried because it is so difficult to live up to the dream of winning it again. The target was to at least qualify, which thankfully we did. The groups were so strong that to progress from the play-off is amazing. Afterwards, they were gobsmacked.
"We chose this team because they have a wow factor. The girls are forming a bond and they all have a lead in their own right. One of the girls has been unwell and so the Friday before the play-off was their only chance to go through their lines together. To present that well was amazing, a great achievement."
Since its introduction in 2009, over 8,000 young people aged between 13 and 17 have taken part in the programme, using business models of professional football clubs to deliver enterprise education.