By Louisa Bradford, who visited Skillforce, a project the Jo Walters Trust supported with one of the Aberdeenshire grants in 2014. 

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Skillforce at a school in Aberdeen towards the end of last year. The students, aged 13 and 14, were practising for their ‘It’s a Knockout’ tournament, a fun day for primary school children where teams would come and play games for points.  The Skillforce students would have to introduce their game, explain the rules and how points would be scored, and then adjudicate.  This session, they were focussing on the introduction - and you’ve never seen a group of chatty teenagers go so quiet…  By the end of the session, coached by teachers AJ and Michelle, they had all managed to stand up in front of  a group of their peers, introduce themselves, explain the rules of their game and how points would be scored.  It was brilliant to see, even in one session, how these children’s confidence developed, and how they encouraged each other to succeed.

Some photos of the session are below. In the photos, they are doing press ups.  They had to do press ups if they were late/naughty.  I had to do press ups on the day, as I didn’t win the game to get ping pong balls in the bucket. Just in case you were wondering.