More than 100 pupils from Manchester United Foundation’s partner high schools shared their ideas to promote equality for women in football, as part of the Premier League Inspires social action challenge.

This challenge tasks young people to take on a social action project to benefit their communities, empowering them to make a difference to the world around them, with this year’s theme centring around gender equality.

An inspiring day at Old Trafford brought together pupils who had prepared projects in advance and presented their ideas to their peers.

The aim of the day was very much for everyone to take home added wisdom and inspiration to continue the fight for equality, but there was additional motivation on offer, too.

The schools were competing for the opportunity to represent the Foundation in the upcoming Premier League Inspires national finals, where they will go head-to-head with representatives of other top-flight clubs – and at Wembley, no less!

The Oldham Academy North emerged as the successful school, being hailed for their idea for a primary school girls’ football festival and their proposals to promote that within their local area.

One pupil, Chloe, explained their school’s idea: “We’re helping young girls to feel included in sports, particularly women’s football.

“As part of our project, we’re planning to do assemblies and presentations to help children understand and recognise things they might not have known about inequality, like viewing figures in men’s and women’s sport.

“Channelling that mindset that gender inequality is wrong, but also that equality is achievable, is something that should be instilled and built into people’s mindsets from a young age. All the schools that came here are really passionate and it showed everyone has a fire for working together in order to stop gender inequality.”

Class-mate Alexandra added: “I am passionate about this project because it raises awareness about gender equality and why it’s so important in sport. From my personal experience, it’s been really hard for me to fit in with male-dominant sports like football and rugby.

“Just being able to raise awareness about gender equality is a big passion of mine. I’ve learnt that gender inequality in sport is not just for women, it’s for men, too.

“Even though I’m not a big football fan, being able to learn about new things and seeing the stadium in real life is surreal to me.”

Another of the pupils, Mwezi, concluded: “This has been a great experience, it taught me a lot about equality that I didn’t know before, and it just helped me understand a lot more about females and equality in sports overall.”