Oren and Rachel rewarded by Herts RFU

Colin Haslam of Herts RFU read out the following speech about Oren Blindell and Rachel Mccullough at the Club Development Evening on Monday at Herts University.  The girls did not arrive till late as they were being interviewd for TV at Barclay's Canary Wharf and receiving their Diana award.  The also received shields from HRFU to recognise their work.@

Oren Blindell and Rachel Mccullough, two Welwyn U18 players, were only 15 when they began a
project which is known as RAW, or Rugby Awareness Week.


For this initiative to raise awareness of youth rugby across Herts in schools they did the following:-
ñ wrote a speech for teenagers to read out in assemblies about youth rugby in clubs which
covered the core values-Respect, Sportsmanship, Discipline, Team work, and Enjoyment.

• They prepared a power point to be shown in assemblies
• In the first season of this project there were 62 teenagers speaking in 42 schools across
• the county in one week.
• Teachers fed back to us that they were delighted with the project.
• To support the project the girls applied for funding from the Big Spend fund and brought
• £9500 into the county, which was spent on courses for coaching and refereeing and for helping to fund girls festivals.

The girls did not stop there.....

• They have also produced 6 editions of a Girls Rugby Newsletter which goes to all clubs for players to print off and display in schools.
• After the first RAW, they ran the project again during the 6 Nations earlier this year and have just sent out new speeches and new powerpoint presentations to schools yet again, this time entitled Don't Forget the Girls!
• This time they hope to raise an awareness of girls rugby , during a time when the focus will be on rugby during the RWC.

Other achievements-

• They recruited and coached a team to play in the girls school competition last Oct.
• And now they are embarking on a new initiative... Rugby Ambassadors in schools.
• They've been doing all this while playing rugby themselves-club, county and regional, and studying for GCSE's. ( which they both did superbly well at, I hear)

Their hard work has brought them several awards including the Presidents XV award and very
recently the Diana Award, a National one for young Volunteers, which they were presented with
earlier today.


So to recognise their hard work I would like to present them with these hoodies and awards.