How sports coaching and mentoring are transforming the lives of disadvantaged young Londoners

The Standard and Greenhouse Sports launch campaign to harness the power of sport to change society — with £500,000 from the Dispossessed Fund and backing from sports stars to get it started

Josh was just nine years old when his mother died of cancer. After that he would come home from school to an empty house, as his father worked night shifts as a security guard. While this gave him freedom to stay out late, it left him vulnerable: home was a tough housing estate in Harlesden where gang violence and stabbings were common. As he entered secondary school, Josh saw only two paths open to him: “Join a gang and get involved in crime, or find a minimum-wage job and get by.”

Five miles to the south, in the Church Street ward of Westminster where child poverty rates are over 55 per cent, 11-year-old Luna struggled for different reasons. She was shy and lacked confidence so she hid at the back of the class, hoping nobody would notice her. At one parent-teacher evening, her science teacher asked her name because he had forgotten it, and the humiliation stung in front of her parents. She would frequently return home in tears after being “picked on” by other girls.

Fast-forward to today. Josh, 24, graduated from university with a 2.1 in marketing. As a teenager, he went on to become one of the country’s top-30 table tennis players for his age.

Luna, too, is on a different trajectory. Now 18, she is an articulate and self-possessed public speaker who plays table tennis for England. No longer reticent, a few weeks ago, on the bus home from school, she witnessed a distressed 13-year-old girl being called “fat” by her “friend” and being mocked when she read out something she had written in class.

Luna John Nguyen/JNVisuals Luna leaned in. “You don’t have to be friends with this person,” she said. “I was once in your situation. You don’t have to take it.” Luna adds: “The bully looked at me like I was crazy, but the relief on the other girl’s face was instant. The bully got off at the next stop. The other girl got off at my stop and we chatted until she felt calm.”

In both instances, it was something at once simple and profound: a charity arrived at their respective schools when they were 11. It started running table tennis sessions, instilling a passion for the sport and, even more importantly, providing them with a mentor. In Josh’s case, the charity-run sessions took place in his school; in Luna’s, at a nearby community centre.

That charity is called Greenhouse Sports , and this year The Standard and Greenhouse Sports are partnering to launch Sporting Chance, a campaign to champion the transformative role that sports coaching and mentoring can play in the lives of disadvantaged young Londoners. Greenhouse employs coach-mentors to run sports such as basketball, table tennis and tennis in schools and at its flagship community centre in Westminster, helping around 8,000 young people a year.

A host of British sporting stars have stepped up to back our campaign.