Luke Ayling was on hand earlier this week to help support coaches from the Leeds United Foundation as they delivered workshops centred around anti-bullying.

Anti-Bullying Week is an annual campaign that started on Monday 16^th November running until Friday 20^th November and the Leeds United defender took time out from his training schedule to join an exclusive video call based on the topic of bullying, during a Premier League Primary Stars session with Brooklands Community Special School.

The Year 6 pupils that were involved in the zoom call all suffer from a range of both physical and mental disabilities, and they had spent time throughout the week preparing questions for Luke around the subject of bullying and the importance of being kind to people.

The young students took it in turns to read their questions aloud during the session and find out more about the right-back, including whether he’d ever experienced bullying and how he handled that situation, how he supports his teammates on and off the pitch and how he treats and deals with people that may be unkind.

Luke Ayling, spoke to LUTV after the zoom call and said: “Kids are going through a hard time at the minute so it’s nice for us to get on these zoom calls and try and give something back to them, especially talking about such an important topic like we did today.

“It’s a bit harder for us to get to schools at the moment and see the kids, so zoom calls are a nice way for us to keep in contact and it was nice to see their faces and see them smiling.”

Dianna Pullano, a TA at Brooklands Community Special School, added: “We have a lot of different children here and they find it hard to get along with each other sometimes, so we talk a lot about anti-bullying, getting along and being kind to one another and working together – making them understand what bullying is.

“The call today has made our kids so happy, it makes them feel like they’re not alone and that other people are going through difficult situations or have gone through them and it’s a really big help to have that outside support.”

Anti-Bullying Week takes place every year and for 2020 the theme for the campaign is United Against Bullying. Bullying can have a long-lasting effect on those who both experience and witness it, therefore it is extremely important to educate youngsters on the subject and the detrimental effects it may have.

By creating conversation around the topic, through shared efforts and ambitions, hopefully we can help to reduce the amount of bullying that goes on.  

For more information on the work being done by the Premier League Primary Stars team at the Leeds United Foundation, please contact Mathew.Everett@leedsunited.com.