Zambia Bound: Grace McCatty and the IDEALS project

Bristol Academy captain Grace McCatty will leave the club during the mid-season break to spend four months volunteering in Zambia on UK Sport’s IDEALS project, which works with Zambian NGOs to use sport to educate, inspire and empower underprivileged young people through coaching sessions, school lessons and workshops. She will be team leader, preparing, guiding and supporting three groups of students through six-week placements, having taken part as a student herself in 2010. Leaving mid-season will be hard, she says, because football encompasses her life every day, but she frames it as a sacrifice and a break rather than a departure and plans to return stronger for 2016. She is fundraising £1,000 to cover medical, travel and living costs plus sports kit for the project.