The Charter School to represent Crystal Palace at Premier League Enterprise Challenge Play-Off
Pupils from The Charter School have won the chance to represent Crystal Palace at this year’s Premier League Enterprise Challenge Play-Offs after impressing judges with their ideas on how to encourage fan diversity.
The Premier League Enterprise Challenge, is the national competition element of the Premier League’s enterprise programme which began in 2009 and which is run in partnership with Sport Relief. The Challenge sees Year 9 and 10 students set a football business-related task by Premier League Executive Chairman Richard Scudamore.
The Heats took place at Selhurst Park on Wednesday 13 December 2017 and saw groups from The Charter School, Platanos College and Carshalton High School for Girls competing for the honour to represent the Club.
One of the judges on the night was international broadcaster and foreign correspondent, Saima Mohsin, a Palace fan who grew up in South Norwood.
She said: “It was a testament to the quality of the presentations that we spent so much time deliberating about who to put forward.
“It was a really tough decision, there were so many good ideas that we also decided to recommend some of the ideas by the groups who didn’t get through to the Club.”
Fellow judge Yama Otung, a sports lawyer and trustee at Palace for Life Foundation, added: “The presentations were excellent, all of the schools had clearly put in so much work and were confident in their ideas.
“Some brilliant ideas came out and, as a trustee, I think we should look towards implementing some of these in the Foundation, too.”
Pupils from Carshalton High School for Girls were runners up on the night and impressed judges with their professional presentation and wide range of ideas.
The third judge, Matthew Fowler, a participant on one of Palace for Life Foundation’s disability programmes, was supported on the night by Daniel Dera, who said: “What Matthew liked was how they came up with ideas that could actually be implemented and taking off.”
The group from The Charter School in Dulwich were delighted to be selected as the winners.
One of the pupils, Makshud, said: “I feel very happy and proud that we have won, we were really shocked! But we did put a lot of work into this.”
His teammate, Mariane, added: “We will work on our presentation and our teamwork and communication so we can make sure we’re better in the next round.”
32 Premier League and English Football League clubs have entered this year’s Challenge and will be represented at six Play-Off events in January. These Play-Off’s will be taking place at Liverpool FC’s Stadium, Anfield, the King Power Stadium, home of Leicester City FC and St. Mary’s Stadium, Southampton FC’s ground.