Aisha Derbi has a bright future ahead of her. Enrolled at De Montfort University in Leicester, she studies Biomedical Science and has a world of opportunities.
But her life could so easily have gone down a different path had it not been for the help of the Pythian Club. If it wasn’t for the club, she fears that she'd be “using heavily”, referring to drug use.
She said: “The Pythian Club has helped me get out the streets. Drugs and crime, being here has stopped me from being associated with those kinds of things. I know a lot of people still in that life but I needed to get out and, now, I’m just focusing on my career and education.”
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Aisha, 26, enjoys playing football, basketball, dancing and rapping. But she said her school life was far from plain sailing. “I had a bad relationship with education; teachers thought I was naughty and loud, they didn’t know how to handle me, they’d throw you away and take you to LSU [learning support unit].”
Aisha, who went to The Nottingham Emmanuel School in West Bridgford, shared advice that she’d give to her younger self. “School can make you feel like you won’t succeed but when I grew up, I understood that schools have a specific system and you’re made to feel if you don’t go through that system you won’t succeed but you can.”
Working with the team at the Pythian Club, not only has she turned her life around for the better but she's working to help and inspire others through her volunteer work. With the club, Aisha mentors and helps coach girls' football. And she added: “I want to graduate and be a great athlete.”
Set up by chief executive Benjamin Rosser in 2014, the Pythian Club has helped hundreds of young people. As well as supporting communities in deprived areas in Nottingham, the Pythian Club engages young people in football, boxing, drama, music and more. As the cost of living impacts many people across the country, it has been emphasised how much youth facilities are needed right now.
One of the Pythian Club’s many aims is to upskill people. Through different courses, young people can gain more qualifications through the club.
Devante Wilson, 23, who formerly worked with the youth charity Base 51, now mentors other young people signed up with the Pythian Club. Through the years, Devante said it has been his mum who has kept him on the straight and narrow.
Devante spoke about what it was like to be a mentor, and said: “There are times when they [the young people] test your patience but we get through it and it’s good to see the results. The more you build a rapport with them, the more they open up and get stuff off their chests.”
Mr Rosser, a former police officer who has had a tram named after him in recognition of his community work, said: “The Pythian Club has changed a lot of people’s lives. Young people, old people, we believe in them. We’re at a crossroads, we can either continue to inspire and lead productive lives or lose them to the negative.
“The cost of living crisis is escalating every single day. People and families are having to make tough decisions but the Pythian Club eliminates some of those decisions with the free activities we do.”
Whether an organisation is big or small, he has “big respect” for those that are helping communities. He said: “We’re helping build back our community that we’ve lost. One of the reasons we’ve lost community is because of Covid, you have to adapt your service to provide holistic support for the community and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
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