The Digital Blue programme centers on delivering STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) events for the local communities surrounding Cobham and Stamford Bridge. The event focused on various activities promoting the upcoming 2022 Women’s Euros using some of the club’s international stars.

Activities ranged from fun football sessions to coding challenges within which the students were tasked with programming electric sphero robots in order to play robot football. Schools education manager Sam Mardle, who was leading the event, explained the purpose of the relaunch of Digital Blue.

‘We’ve run the Digital Blue programme through Premier League funding since 2017, although it was disrupted during Covid,' says Sam. ‘We are treating this event as a relaunch, with the main theme focus on this year’s Women’s Euros. Not all the boys and girls here are interested in football, but the variety of activities available to them allows them to feel immersed and get behind what we are trying to do.’

The three schools included were St Johns CofE, St Andrews and St Marks, and Ferne Hill Primary. Sam hopes that the Foundation can work with the trio of schools yearly, developing these same young people into Digital Blue ambassadors.

Sam explains: ‘We hope that these boys and girls can take the skills they learn here and go on to teach their friends. It creates a sustainability to the whole project rather than these guys coming to the event then going home and forgetting about it over time.

‘The main aim of this programme is to raise awareness about what coding is, we’re able to provide the facilities that these children may not have at school. It’s also to provide inspiration for some of these young people.

'Chelsea have huge international female players and coming to the training ground and engaging in activities around these superstars will, hopefully, lead to them following their heroes at the Women’s Euros.’