James Collins - Aged 20 “At the very young age of 15 I first began volunteering for Activity Sheffield, doing sport coaching in Colley Park and through them I got involved volunteering for Chilypep and the volunteer network project volunteering at all different groups at Remington Youth Club on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights. With Chilypep I did lots of training and volunteering. I did my introduction to youth work, child protection, equal opportunities and I did my 1000 Millennium Volunteer award. When I was younger I didn’t really want to be bothered with helping other people and when I saw people that were very close to me die it inspired me even more to help people and through helping and volunteering for the youth project and the training that I did, it helped me to get to know myself better, and realise that I could offer things to the community. This really boosted my confidence and inspired me to do my Community Sports Leaders Award. Then I did my Football Association Coaching level one and other national governing body awards and then started to set up my own junior football club for boys and girls where I was secretary and manager of the club. Since then I have gone from strength to strength I have now done my City and Guilds Sport and Leisure progression award level 1 and 2 and then moved onto my BTEC National Diploma in sport. In the summer I am going to the United States to coach soccer for 3 months then I am coming back to go to Sheffield Hallam University to start a four year degree that will qualify me to be a physical education teacher, if it wasn’t for all the different projects like Chilypep and activity Sheffield I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I didn’t get the grades that I wanted in school and all the different projects basically turned my life around and through Chilypep gave me the boost of confidence, inspiration and motivation to succeed where I am right now, I would like to thank all of the different projects that have helped me in the past especially Chilypep because they have been fantastic and I would further recommend to any other young person to look into themselves and look what also they could achieve by volunteering and helping others because also it could change At the time of going to print, James was in Chicago, USA coaching football to children and young people!
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