Throughout February and March, the Foundation’s Equality and Diversity team delivered 36 sessions to participants from the Inspire Her, Premier League Primary Stars and Premier League Fans’ Fund programmes, as well as students from the Standing Together project funded by the Mayor of London.

Sessions took place at 23 different schools, with over 2,000 students participating. On Friday, 120 students visited Stamford Bridge for a special workshop in advance of International Women’s Day on Saturday.

As part of the Accelerating Allyship workshops, students were asked to think about scenarios both in school and in life where gender biases occur. The groups were asked to create a Hand of Allyship to show how they would turn their thoughts into actions and be better allies to women and girls.

Sam Gaskin-Kemp, head of community and education at Chelsea Foundation, said: ‘The aim of these Accelerating Allyship workshops is to get groups from both genders talking and sharing experience, as both groups will see and experience the world differently. By doing this during their formative years they can develop tolerance, understanding and empathy for each other and ultimately be great allies for equality.’

Claudia from Holy Cross School said: ‘Sometimes women can be stopped from reaching goals and promotions, but hearing about women in sport and history I’ve learned that women can do anything if they put their mind to it.’

Giovanni from St Thomas More Language School said: ‘I’ve learned that women should be more featured in sports and media across the world. Women face rejection from some audiences and not getting the attention they deserve. It’s important to include women, at the end of the day we are all the same and we’ll try to be role models for inclusion.’

Mrs Wilson, head of Year 7 at St Thomas Moore Language School, added: ‘Chelsea in itself holds a lot of weight so to know that they can come here, see people wearing Chelsea uniforms and they advocate on these issues, it is not just coming from your teachers or your mum, it is coming from people you may aspire to be like in the future.

‘In our year groups we can see a lot of gender bias, especially as they go up the years in school, so it is something that we have worked on and tried to educate them on, particularly the Year 8 boys. We have done a lot of work with them in terms of understanding difference, gender norms and how we can break down barriers.’