London Football Journeys and Hackney Laces teamed up to hold an inter-community football exchange at Dalston’s Petchey Academy recently.

The LFJ charity and Hackney Laces invited women and girls from South London and Tower Hamlets to build relationships and understand a different perspective of London by meeting young women and girls from Hackney.

And the group engaged over a range of football activities, led by Hackney Laces coaches, which started with ice breaker activities and team building games.

The Hackney Laces coach led those in attendance in different football drills and games with mixed teams in order to get them to know each other and work as a collective.

Following the activities, the group had lunch and ended the day with a mixed football match of all ages, with the youngest being 12 years old and the oldest 35.

The girls at Hackney Laces have been taking part in the partnership programme with LFJ, which develops the confidence and self-esteem of the participants through creating their own short-film challenging gender stereotypes in football and expressing what life is like in their community.

The programme ran weekly sessions, facilitated by the social enterprise Sisterhood.

A week later, the young women and girls from Hackney travelled to Wandsworth to take part in the inter-community football exchange that was this time hosted by South London Laces.

It was the first time some of the girls from Hackney had travelled to South London to take part in a football event outside of school and the two sessions proved hugely popular.

One of those attending said: “At first I was nervous because I didn’t know anybody, but afterwards I got to know everyone and it was fun.”

Another added: “Today was fun, energetic and creative.”

And a third member of the group also highlighted how valuable the sessions had been, saying: “We didn’t acknowledge that people came from south London, we just thought of them as one of us.”