SUCCESSFUL EFDN STEM NETWORK LAUNCH IN LONDON
On September 5, 2019, EFDN, host Chelsea FC and Feyenoord Rotterdam invited European clubs, leagues and FAs to Stamford Bridge, London for the launch of the new EFDN STEM Network. 15 clubs and our partner Pro League attended the first meeting and emphasised their interest in creating a new platform to exchange knowledge.
STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics – is the field that helps children learn how to program, make codes, and understand technological devices. The EFDN STEM Network launch was coming together of like-minded, European football clubs and foundations, who wish to explore STEM education as a new community programme area and take their first steps towards driving innovation in STEM education through football.
The attendees were welcomed by Hubert Rovers, CEO of EFDN and the host Matt Mead, Head of Innovation & Education at Chelsea Foundation. The Education department at Chelsea FC Foundation has spent the last two and a half years building and delivering STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) programmes for its local community and highlighting the skills needed for tomorrow. Mead explained the clubs’ motivation for initiating partnerships with experts, companies and other clubs like San Francisco 49ers (American Football) and Feyenoord Rotterdam.
Carla Lagendijk presented the community work of Feyenoord and their fast-growing STEM education programmes. Afterwards, Tim Chase, Founder of TruChallenge presented a case study and explains how he sees EFDN using the platform to deliver STEM projects to their community. TruChallenge is a platform that can be used by organisations to collect videos of online challenges. Tomas Abreu from our member Brentford FC tested one of the challenges right away as he tried Robot Football which is a game based on coding.
After testing Robot Football, the attending clubs and partners discussed the next steps and agreed on using one of the networking roundtables at our next EFDN Conference on 19th & 20th November in Barcelona to share new ideas and best practices. EFDN will also create a new STEM section on the EFDN online learning platform so the clubs can share their delivery plans and STEM curricula.
