 The Welsh Government's lift programme aims to provide 5,000 training and employment opportunities by the end of 2017 for people living in households where no one is in work. The programme supports those who face the greatest barriers to becoming employed, such as young single parents, adults with few or no formal qualifications, people with poor employment records and disabled people. As of March 2016, the lift programme has provided over 3,000 training and employment opportunities with 590 people supported into employment and is well on track to meet its tackling poverty action plan target. The Centre for Coaching Excellence, in partnership with the Welsh Government's lift programme, are delivering their Our Club project in Wales for the first time. Our Club Wales is a six-week employability project for lift participants from the Swansea North West, Avon Valley and Comarthenshire lift areas. It's really good to be here today with several participants of the lift programme doing the programme Our Club. Some of them haven't been out of the house for many months before they joined the programme. Really enjoying it. We've got Morrison's, Gwalia, DVLA, all participating in the programme, so it's great that employers are engaging with us in this way. We're delighted to be supporting the lift programme. I think from our point of view, the Our Club programme has been really successful in other parts of the UK to bring it here to be able to support participants who really have been from really tough backgrounds. It's great to be able to support our employers and the employer's support that we've received as well. It's fantastic and we really look forward to some positive outcomes from the programme. The project involves two-weeks employability training based at the Liberty Stadium in Swansea, followed by four weeks of work experience with local employers. The aim is that through undertaking a combination of sports-based teamwork, skills training and job placements, participants' newfound confidence and abilities will impress prospective employers and lead to offers of permanent employment. This session marries really well with what Our Club is all about, which is giving people life skills, understanding what being in a workplace, working with other people is all about, and for whatever reason these people have had very little experience in that field. So it's great to be involved with that. Well, when I first came here it was a bit sceptical. I didn't want to do it as a lot of classroom stuff and that, but after that I got into it. I was a bit weary of coming, and then when I came I was glad then that it stuck to it. When I first started, I was, had no confidence, I would never stand up in front of anybody, had no focus in life, what I wanted to do was a career. Six weeks ago I got asked to do the Our Club project to gain experience. I've gained a lot from it. Building friendships and teamwork and learning to walk away from bad situations and problem solving. And what my session does is help them understand about things like confidence and fear and how they take them into the workplace. And they don't even realise they've got them sometimes, and it manifests itself sometimes in anger or rejection. And what we do is make them understand what those fears are and then overcome them by improving their confidence. And now it's good jail, I like it, enjoy it. And we're all from different areas as well. All different, yeah. Yeah, we've all got on, we've all like clicked as well, like being a group together rather than just separate. It's been good. It's been good. It's been good. So unexpected at all. I've done numerous other programmes and never achieved anything I have through this. I've achieved a lot more for this programme. Now I know what I want to do, I have focus and looking forward to the future. We talk about fear, we get them to do some wacky stuff, dancing around and breaking boards with their hands, breaking arrows on the throats and then eventually walk on hot coals, 500 degrees C. If I were walking, I wouldn't have done that six weeks ago and I'd done it twice. So I'm very proud of myself for doing that. It's just one of those things where they believe that it's impossible to do this, but by the end of the day you can see the big smiles on their face because they realise that things that they believe or perceive as being impossible are actually possible. And what they've got to do now is end up that into the workplace and hopefully they will do. Professional footballer and former Wales international, Robbie Savage, visited the project to speak to the participants about his personal journey. Overcoming barriers, applying resilience and his motivation and determination to succeed. I've gone today with the Welsh Government's lift programme, which is a fantastic opportunity for any person of any age to seek full-time employment, especially from households where nobody works as well, which is massively important. It's been great to see so many enthusiastic people from all ages with a desire to get back or get into full-time employment. I think this course gives them that opportunity. So it's great to be here and looking forward to hopefully seeing some of these people I've met today to get into work. I'm going to William Mill, obviously that's for the next month. Looking forward to it, can't wait to get started now actually to be honest. Just want to get on in the morning, get started. DVLA, I'm going. So I have applied for the job as well already. So fingers crossed now, get my career back and be back into it again. I'm going to Morrison's. I've done a six-week programme with William Mill and they've now offered to first track me through to the deputy manager in their new store. I'm still shocked to go and see the army. I've been working in Morrison's for four weeks and now I've learned that I want to go do reform with a licence because I can't work in an environment which is all male, which I've never done before. So I've gained a lot from that. Even a lot of people have laughed at me. They said, oh, you can't do that, but I can do that. It's all because Lyft team as well, about them wouldn't be able to do any of the stuff that I've done because I have a little boy. So he's a big commitment and I needed help to get here and the Lyft team has done all that. I think the thing for me is taking these people from a can't do mentality to a can't do mentality aiming to get them more into the healthy lifestyle and the well-being that is required for a good job and at the end of the day getting them to believe themselves which is the most important thing. The Our Club Wales project ended in a graduation day on the 18th of February. By early March, six of the 21 participants had secured employment and many of the others with continuing support from their Lyft mentors are expected to do so in the near future.