Chelsea Foundation hosted nearly 100 school students from local primary schools at Stamford Bridge for a World Book Day workshop which included an appearance by Chelsea Women captain and Foundation trustee, Millie Bright OBE.
The students from St John’s Waltham Green CE Primary School, Normand Croft Community School and St Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary School enjoyed an educational and creative workshop based on Millie, who is currently in the process of writing an inclusive children’s book and series of comics with her mum, Nicola.
All three schools are part of Chelsea Foundation’s Premier League Primary Stars programme, and students were asked to think about using their character traits as superpowers with examples such as kindness, confidence and resilience.
This year World Book Day is championing children’s reading choices, encouraging all children to Read Your Way. Every reader is different, and there is no right or wrong way to enjoy reading. To celebrate different reading styles and creativity, the workshop’s theme was ‘What is my superpower?’
Students were tasked with thinking about a time they used their superpower, why their superpower was important and how they would use it in the future. Finally, the students designed their own Millie comic characters showing their superpowers in action.
Millie and Nicola then surprised all the students, helping them with the activity, taking part in a Q&A, while Millie also donated a signed shirt to each school.
Millie said: ‘Inspiring future generations both on and off the pitch is something I am deeply committed to. Football is an incredible tool to help motivate children in their education.
‘Working with the Chelsea Foundation on this workshop was such an enriching and rewarding experience for me. It was brilliant seeing the students so enthusiastic about creating their characters and comic books, and I look forward to continuing on this journey with the students and Chelsea Foundation and hope to be able to include some of the characters created on the day in my final comics.’
BBC’s Match of the Day were on hand to film the event, which will be broadcast on Sunday 9 March.
Laura Cordingley, chief executive of Chelsea Foundation, said: ‘Premier League Primary Stars is one of our core educational programmes and we were thrilled to invite three local schools to Stamford Bridge to celebrate World Book Day along with a special appearance from our trustee [Millie Bright](/en/teams/profile/millie-bright) OBE.
‘Millie has been an outstanding ambassador for Chelsea FC and Chelsea Foundation, and we look forward to further developing our work with her.’
The event was supported by the Premier League Charitable Fund and Professional Footballers’ Association.
Premier League Primary Stars is the Premier League’s primary school education programme. Funded by the Premier League through the Premier League Charitable Fund, the programme uses the appeal of football to help children be active and develop essential life skills.
To mark World Book Day 2025, the Premier League will be giving away more than 28,000 free books to children across England and Wales through its Premier League Primary Stars education programme. The books have been donated to the programme by the World Book Day Charity, run in partnership with the National Literacy Trust.
Since Premier League Primary Stars began in 2017, more than 300,000 free books have been gifted to young people with an estimated value of £2.4million.