The Foundation team have been delivering countless workshops across the community - such as school clubs - all month, reaching almost 6,000 participants, including school-aged children as well as walking footballers, Chelsea staff, university students and players from the Football Development Centre. The sessions were a series of workshops that used iconic Chelsea shirts as a backdrop to understand more about Black History Month.

Participants were invited to design their own shirts to celebrate BHM and three winners were chosen from hundreds of entries. Women’s player Kadeisha Buchanan and musical artist and youth project manager Capo Lee joined the panel of judges to met the participants before selecting the winners.

The month continued with the re-launch of ‘This Is Us’, a No To Hate project that celebrates Chelsea’s black players throughout history. We worked with young artist Zem Clarke to extend last year’s project, with Zem illustrating 41 black players to mark the 41 seasons since Paul Canoville made his debut for the club.

Zem’s artwork was launched at a No To Hate event later in the month in the Canoville Suite, which was put on in partnership with the Black Collective of Media in Sport (BCOMS) to celebrate black content creators working across the game, enabling creators to network and make professional opportunities with club representatives, partners and external organisations.

During the event we announced the second-year of our Journalist Bursary Programme, also created in partnership with BCOMS. The programme offers funding for two students from under-represented backgrounds to complete their NCTJ-accredited Journalism Masters, a gateway into a career in sports journalism. The bursary also offers a contribution to both students’ living costs.

Last year’s recipients of the bursary have landed roles at BBC Sport and Arsenal Football Club. Alongside the Journalist Bursary Programme, at the event we announced the Blue Creator Fund in partnership with Versus. More details will be shared in the coming months.

We also partnered with Fulham FC at an event at Craven Cottage to celebrate the achievements of influential figures in the black community across sports media. Speakers included Bobby Decordova-Reid, Anne-Marie Batson, Paul Canoville, Javan Odegah and video messages from some of our men’s team – Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Trevoh Chalobah and Carney Chukwuemeka.

Towards the end of the October, the Paul Canoville Foundation and Chelsea collaborated on an event that showcased a video created by Chelsea TV that highlighted the journey of black players at Chelsea through the shirts they wore. Other speakers included Chelsea board member Barbara Charone and Paul Canoville himself.

We also sat down with Chelsea's first black captain, Paul Elliott, to talk about his time at the club and his legacy work challenging discrimination and promoting diversity across football and beyond.

In addition, we have a number of ongoing No To Hate and Foundation programmes that promote diversity on and off the pitch:

• Our partnership with the FA to fund their Elite Mentee Programme has continued, which provides career progression for black, Asian and female coaches seeking to get into the elite game – and saw coaches from the Foundation and female Regional Talent Centre take part last season.

• We will also be working with the FA to provide opportunities for black, Asian, female and those from under-represented communities to undertake their UEFA B qualifications (the minimum needed to be an academy coach).

• Standing Together – London Mayor’s Shared Endeavour Fund: a programme run by the Chelsea Foundation that works with partner organisations (Tell Mama, The Met Police, Kick It Out, amongst others) to tackle discrimination, religious intolerance and hate crime. In this programme the Foundation have already engaged over 220 participants in two immersion stadium events, over 16 campaign sessions and eight community sessions

• Speak Out – ADL: A continuation of our Say No To Hate programme in partnership with US-based organisation the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The programme operates across both sides of the Atlantic to help young people talk about diversity, celebrate inclusion and understand discrimination.

At Chelsea, we know our work in diversifying football doesn’t just happen in October. We are committed to challenging racism and discrimination, celebrating our black players, promoting diversity and changing the game all year round.