Freddie Flintoff’s touching BBC One show Field Of Dreams ended this week leaving viewers satisfied that one of England’s greatest cricketers has used his fame to put 15 disadvantaged young lads on course for a decent life. By building a cricket team in his home town of Preston, Freddie has shown the extraordinary change that can be achieved when young people are given the chance to find a passion, the opportunity to hone skills and the encouragement from adults to keep motivated. As he says: “There must be kids out there who’ve got the raw talent … but have just never had the chance.”
Most of these boys had never picked up a bat, yet the turnaround in lads like Sean is remarkable. The skinny boy in a hoodie started Series One flicking V-signs as Freddie tried to persuade him that being part of a team would be more fulfilling than bunking off school. In Series Two, a newly motivated Sean captained the team on a tour to Kolkata. How do we scale up Freddie’s vision for the thousands of other Seans out there?
More than one in ten 18 to 25-year-olds are not in employment, education or training. The increase since 2023 (74,000) would fill Lord’s cricket ground twice over. This year’s GCSE results stayed stubbornly lower in areas of greatest poverty. Our research shows that a quarter of young people have stopped out-of-school activities, mostly sport, because of financial hardship.
Part of the answer lies in greater investment in a vital but dramatically depleted workforce who replicate Flintoff’s work every day. Youth workers build trusted relationships, help with the myriad issues young people face in 2024, increase their confidence and social skills and offer the chance to discover new interests so talent does not go undiscovered.
Since 2013, 760 youth centres have closed; only 8 per cent of young people attend a youth club. Fighting that trend, OnSide will add seven new multimillion-pound youth clubs, called Youth Zones, to our national network of 15 by 2025. A mix of public and, crucially, philanthropic funding will allow us to invest millions in vibrant spaces where young people are encouraged by well-trained youth workers to try new things, at only 50p a session. One of our new zones will be in Preston, welcoming 4,000 8 to 19-year-olds.
Congratulations, Freddie — we now need more philanthropists to see the value of youth work.
