**In light of this year's theme for Mental Health Awareness Week - 'Action' - while mental health awareness is vital, real change comes when we take action too.**
For us, that action is rooted in our community outreach programmes that centre on and support mental health and wellbeing. Alisha, a participant on one of those programmes, Arsenal in the Community's delivery of Advantage Mentoring's Talking Tactics programme, demonstrates the impact of that action and Arsenal's commitment to the needs of our local community.
Before Talking Tactics, Alisha had previously been seen by the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), but it hadn't felt right for her. “It felt more one-size-fits-all. I felt like I had to say the right thing."
Talking Tactics was different. The one-to-one sessions at the Emirates Stadium and the Arsenal Hub immediately felt calmer and more accessible. "My mentor wanted to listen and gave me good advice," Alisha says. "It felt more open and casual. I could speak freely." Crucially, her mentor understood her world - football, college, Arsenal and that made all the difference.
Alisha worked consistently towards her goals, her challenges around confidence and emotional regulation, and grew more self-assured and ambitious with each session. The programme helped her to notice more positive things in her own life and see the good things that happen each week. She used the sessions to work towards her goals, completing homework and challenges in between, and it gave her the confidence and opportunity to start new things, picking football back up and returning to things she loved doing. She also found her voice - being able to speak better if things didn't go her way or she disagreed on anything. "I've learned that I don't always have to say yes," she reflects. "It's okay to say no. I can set boundaries and put myself first." With that came the practical skills too: better time management, working on assignment deadlines, and feeling more organised.
Alisha now coaches young people herself and credits Talking Tactics with making her better at it. "My confidence improved lots as a result of it, as well as my communication through public speaking and presenting," she says. Her Talking Tactics mentor understood the difficulties from football and coaching and was able to help with suggestions on how to change things. Sessions with her mentor helped Alisha understand the dynamics of being a coach, overcoming some of the difficulties, and how she can better engage with her own participants. And with that growing confidence and ambition, she has realised something bigger - a goal she can now name out loud: to become a PE teacher.
Programmes like Talking Tactics represent one of the most important things we can do to prevent people from becoming unwell in the first place - focused on helping those with mild to moderate mental health needs reduce and eliminate their need for acute care before it reaches that point.
Alisha's story is a reminder of why mentoring matters and why programmes like Talking Tactics are so vital for young people in our communities. Since 2020, Arsenal in the Community have been proud to deliver Talking Tactics to young people aged 11-21 across Camden and Islington, with the support of North London Foundation Trust and championed by West and North London ICB.
For more information about Talking Tactics, please contact Gemma Benham at gbenham@arsenal.co.uk or visit [www.advantagementoring.co.uk/talking-tactics/](http://www.advantagementoring.co.uk/talking-tactics/)
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.