Our Dragons Community team are out and about across the region every day, aiming to unite and inspire through the delivery of a diverse and innovative range of initiatives.
The ‘In the Community’ feature is all about the stories of the people they come into contact with. Today we hear from Newport-born footballer Ellis Harrison - now on the books at Potsmouth FC - about his time at Rodney Parade…
When I first arrived at Rodney Parade I had been playing up in school so they had put me on a placement. It wasn’t my first placement for bad behaviour - but this was last chance saloon for me to stay in education.
I genuinely think if I didn’t go to the Dragons project I wouldn’t be where I am today. It made me mature as a person at such a young age, being around adults all day, learning new jobs but also sitting in the classroom to do my education work. I loved it!
The people at Dragons are were so helpful because they understood that I wasn’t a bad person and treated me like an adult, which made me feel like I couldn’t let them down when I would go back to school.
I would go out to the Community with Mike (Sage) and Janice (Chappell) to do little camps with other kids in schools. In a few of them I could see a few kids like me, but they were younger and I saw the faces on them when Mike and Janice walked in and I realised how much they were doing in the Community!
I would also like to say how good Phil (James) was to me.. he was the strict one out of all three, but wow. What a gentleman he was! The respect I had for that man was incredible!
Thank you everyone at Dragons!
Ellis
