ADD-Mentor collects EFL Community Project of the Season award.

Yesterday afternoon, Bristol City and the Robins Foundation collected the EFL Community Project of the Season award at the 2024 EFL Awards, with its ADD-Mentor project picking up the divisional award for the Sky Bet Championship.

The divisional winners of the EFL Community Awards 2024 were announced at the Houses of Parliament as part of the annual ceremony.

The EFL Community Awards 2024 celebrate the very best in Club community work and recognising commitment, innovation and impact from Clubs and players during the 2023/24 season. 

The ADD-Mentor programme, since its inception has supported young people identified by the police as being at risk of going to prison. The project delivers major impact in the local area, helping to transform the lives of its participants and acting as a catalyst for positive change.

Robins foundations chief Development Officer James Edwards who wrote and secured the funding for the project said: "In society we praise the wrong people, it takes immense internal strength to turn your back on criminal lifestyle when everyone around you is doing it. People who can do that should be put on a pedestal and praised above all others.

"Mentoring gives young people a lifeline, another supported option to try. In 2001 I was privileged to mentor both Jade and Sam. Mentoring is a lifelong commitment and the ADD-Mentor project was an idea, it only works if the right people are delivering it.

"To have Jade and Sam leading on this project is the reason for its success. They have lived the same lives as all the young people that get referred into us. They don’t preach they don’t judge and they never let the young people down. They spend 10-20 hours a week with each young person. The more time they spend with them the less time they spend on the streets with the negative influences around them. The young people that get referred into the project are the high end offenders that are costing society, the police and the council hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on daily offences.

"We are proud to say in the first year of the project not one of the 10 young people Sam & Jade were working with appeared on any council or police reports. Other agencies had failed or given up on these young people, yet Sam & Jade have got them into positive provision and back into the education system. This project is literally saving society thousands of pounds at the same time as turning ‘written off’ young people into positive valued citizens.

"In our opinion of this sector, lived experience trumps all other qualifications. We are so privileged and proud to have Jade and Sam as part of our team, they are by far the best in the country at this work and Bristol is lucky to have them."