Dear Parent, Carer or Guardian

The Young Leaders in Cricket programme (YLiC) is designed to give 14 to 16 year olds the opportunity to use their knowledge of cricket to develop their leadership and life skills. We have put together SIX modules, each containing the best self-improvement characteristics of the game to create a leadership and life skills programme that will help your daughter or son to thrive as a volunteer at their club or in their community or at their school.

Volunteering is the lifeblood of any community club and cricket is no different. It has a long and proud tradition of being managed and run by people who give up their time voluntarily to provide a safe environment to be active, to socialise and to be part of the wider community.

Classroom setting, a group of young leaders and coaches at desks with laptops

The YLiC programme introduces young people to the ethos of volunteering, why it is so important to become part of a volunteer workforce to keep clubs going and to help those in wider society who might be less fortunate or struggling.

We ask all parents/carers, the club, and the young leader to sign a three-way pledge which requires the young person to complete the course and deliver their volunteering hours. It provides the young leader with a support structure; a motivator in the parent/carer and a guarantee of volunteering opportunities offered by the club. In the ten years of delivering the programme we have found this to be a very helpful mechanism for committing all the parties to the young person’s success.

Mentor and young leader sitting down facing each other at the front of a presentation

The programme works like this:

  • The young candidate is provided with 16 hours of training in 6 different leadership and life skills modules
  • The now trained Young Leader offers a minimum of 20 hours of volunteering in their club, school or wider community.
  • The subscription cost to sign up for this is £70. We also ask each young leader to fundraise £60 to put back into the project so it can offer future young leaders the chance to go on the young leader programme.
  • Cricket Leaders Community Interest Company – a not for profit, social enterprise – which manages the YLiC programme works with many partners to offer the Young Leader volunteering opportunities in the wider community. This will be with responsible, safety checked organisations such as the ECB or charitable enterprises such as the London Cricket Trust (LCT)

The programme was set up and is still being led by a group of people who give up their time voluntarily to handle the management and organisation. We formed ourselves into a not for profit, social enterprise, CIC (Community Interest Company) to ensure that the programme is run for the benefit of the young people and the ethos of volunteering which is the essence of all community cricket clubs.

For more details of where your daughter or son can sign up for the programme please visit our registration page.

If you are a Club please contact Chris Whitaker or Allen Blackford