Community programmes like Premiership Rugby HITZ at Gloucester Rugby provide inspiration and guidance for young people like Fallan to shine once again.

After an unstable start in life, with her dad moving away to the Philippines when Fallan was young and an experience of school life tainted by both physical and mental bullying for her appearance, the youngster understandably lost her way. Teachers in school provided little support for Fallan’s ADHD and demonstrated a lack of understanding as to why she found the work hard and regularly misbehaved. This encouraged Fallan to seek an alternative educational environment, where her support workers introducing her to HITZ.

HITZ is Premiership Rugby’s flagship education and employability programme, working with over 2,000 14-to-23-year-olds across England every year with the support of the CVC Foundation and Wooden Spoon, and is delivered with official education partner SCL Education Group. Delivered by 13 Premiership Rugby shareholder clubs, the programme uses the power of community alongside rugby’s core values of teamwork, respect, enjoyment, discipline, and sportsmanship, to support young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) back into education, training, apprenticeships and/or employment.

Fallan is just one inspirational young person that Premiership Rugby will be celebrating during round 21 of Gallagher Premiership Rugby (25-27 March). All matches during this weekend will be dedicated to the award-winning community programmes that Premiership rugby run. These benefit more than 250k people across the UK every year and we will be shining the spotlight on some of the individuals supported to celebrate their stories.

After overcoming her initial first day nerves at HITZ, Fallan grew in confidence, and she soon found the right people to provide reassurance and positive influence.

The circumstances of her early life led to Fallan developing an eating disorder to the concern of those around her. This, plus exposure to drugs and other traumatic events whilst she was vulnerable impacted heavily on Fallan’s mental health nearly leading to her taking her own life.

By seeking out positive people at HITZ friendships formed and her engagement in the programme flourished which started to turn around her mental health. Fallan challenged herself to try many sports and realised what she could achieve, enabling her confidence to flourish. Fallan says;

"I have come up against so many barriers in my life and it would be easy to give up and go back to the way I was before. HITZ has given me the purpose and drive to push through these barriers.

"I am thankful to Michael and Matt for supporting me to fulfil my potential. With everything that has happened, I know they could have given up on me, but they chose to stick with me and watch me blossom."

Michael Hoult, our HITZ Tutor says, "by supporting young people like Fallan to open up their eyes to their full potential we are able to increase confidence levels. In turn this increases their employability skills giving them improved life chances."

Since its inception in 2008 the HITZ programme has helped over 20,000 14–23-year-olds like Fallan with 75% completing the HITZ learning academy. A huge 80% of participants have expressed improvements in life skills such as confidence and resilience. It is these newfound skills that help 80% of the participants who complete the programme to go straight on to education, employment, or training.

Fallan finds her feet thanks to the HITZ programme at Gloucester Ru...

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