Inverness Caley Thistle endorse High Life Highland Leadership Programme as Scottish Cup finalists partner up on scheme
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A Highland-wide leadership scheme for young people has received the backing of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC.
The High Life Highland Leadership Programme deploys people between the ages of 12 and 25 into their local community, ranging between museums, music tuition, libraries, youth work – and their most common area, sport.
Sport's prevalence in the programme is a result of its origins, starting out as an Active Schools project and expanding out across the whole of the Highlands.
Young people gain life skills around employability, and through the Choose To Lead programme in partnership with UHI can gain level four and five SCQF credits that help when applying for further education.
There are more tangible rewards for youngsters too. A common refrain among staff and young people is "it's all about the hoodie", with participants working their way through various different colours until they get to the top black and gold hoodie for 500 hours of engagement.
An estimated 4500 youngsters have enrolled in the programme since it was introduced Highland-wide seven years ago, with countless more people benefitting from the hours that have been put in.
Naturally in Scotland, with sport being such a big focus of the programme, football is a major area of interest, and the programme also works with the Scottish FA to develop coaching abilities.
The programme has already been endorsed by global football superstars like Claude Makelele and Frank De Boer. Now, efforts are being made to formalise a relationship with Caley Thistle, which could see youngsters deployed at the football club – and in turn help ICT's youngsters build their own leadership skills.
"The hope is that we can now have a chat with Caley Thistle to talk about deployment of our young leaders out to their community projects," Elizabeth McDonald, the Leadership Programme's development officer, said.
"It could work the other way round too – their young players could become part of our leadership programme, and we could offer them training around that.
"There's a kudos around it if Caley Thistle are supporting it, especially if young footballers are involved in our programme.
"They are seeing that Caley Thistle think it's okay, so it will become even cooler to be there."
Alyn Gunn, who developed the football training pack being used as part of the programme, added: "(ICT sporting director) John Robertson is endorsing our football leadership programme that we're running through High Life Highland.
"If you're 14 or 15 years old and you're interested in football, there are free Scottish FA courses you can take, so we've tied in with that and UK Coaching to run an online cardiac arrest course.
"It's a good opportunity for young people to develop these skills, and we've tried to fit all that into our programme.
"We will try to get them experience with Caley Thistle's community team and through our Active Schools co-ordinators across the Highlands.
"Just having a club as outstanding as Caley backing our ideas and supporting our efforts is massive to us.
"We hope that it's a longevity thing where Caley can tie into our leadership sometimes and we can give them our young leaders. Everyone's a winner."
The Leadership Programme has been such a success in the Highlands that other areas are already looking at using the winning formula.
Gunn believes that it has the potential to be rolled out worldwide, but McDonald says there are several steps to take before that can happen.
"Other areas do want to use the award, they are very interested in it and have started trying to use the format," she explained.
"We'll have to have that chat with other regions, but they are very interested in it.
"Moray Active Schools have been in contact, and they have used bits of it. Particularly around our Choose To Lead award, which is attached to UHI, people are very interested in that, but we need to know it works first.
"It has taken a long time to get it up and running, there's a lot of work that goes into that before we hand it over to someone else, but we're open to that.
"What we'd really like is a sponsor. We've always thought that if we could get something Highland-wide as a sponsor on the hoodie, that would be great, but we haven't had any success with that yet.
"No matter where you go, you will see young people wearing this hoodie – even driving over the Skye bridge. Our logo is on it and out there, but we'd be happy to have chats with anyone who's interested."
