Taking the Conversation Beyond Our Community

From Premier League clubs to classrooms across Britain, discover how Maccabi GB is taking education beyond our community and helping thousands challenge antisemitism, prejudice and discrimination.

Some of Maccabi GB's most important conversations now happen well beyond the Jewish community.They take place in football academies and cricket grounds, in staff rooms and classrooms, with stewards, coaches, teachers, professional athletes and thousands of young people from every background.

Through Tackling Antisemitism in Sport, Stand Up! Education Against Discrimination and the Alan Senitt Upstanders Leadership Programme, our Contribution to British Society work uses education and relationships to challenge prejudice while helping build a society in which Jewish people can participate confidently and proudly.

Tackling Antisemitism in Sport has continued its extraordinary growth. During the first half of 2026, the programme reached 1,900 people through 74 workshops at 33 Premier League clubs, EFL clubs and County Football Associations.

During this period, that included academies and stewarding teams from Premier League teams, staff from County Football Associations and training for Kick It Out staff, alongside our first workshops with the Lawn Tennis Association and International Tennis Federation and further expansion into County Cricket.

That expansion has continued. Cardiff City and Crawley Town are among the latest professional football clubs to engage with the programme, leaving only eight of the 92 Premier League and EFL clubs still to reach. We have delivered our first major engagement with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, continued developing our work within cricket and are now in the final stages of an exciting new Premier League project.

The significance of that work goes beyond the numbers. Every workshop is an opportunity to help people understand what antisemitism looks like, why certain language or behaviour matters, and the role they can play in creating sporting environments where Jewish supporters, players and staff feel that they belong.

That same principle sits at the heart of Stand Up! Education Against Discrimination.

During the 2025/26 academic year, Stand Up! reached around 25,000 participants, empowering young people to recognise prejudice and giving them the confidence to challenge discrimination when they encounter it. By creating a safe space and through interactive workshops, students are empowered to learn about and act against racism and discrimination with a specific focus on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility.

Through our London focused delivery, supported by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime Shared Endeavour Fund, our evaluation revealed positive outcomes across all measures; message inoculation – endorsement of extremist narratives/stereotypes, message inoculation – recognising and refuting persuasion attempts, message inoculation – awareness of persuasion techniques, reporting hate incidents and quality of implementation. The most significant attitudinal shift was the reduction in endorsement of extremist narratives/stereotypes across all seven statements with a 20.5% shift overall.

Stand Up! Education Against Discrimination works very closely with CST, as well as local authorities, to ensure that any schools experiencing incidents of antisemitism are prioritised and receive our workshops. This is particularly important given that CST recorded 178 cases of school-related antisemitism in the first six months of 2026 alone - the highest total for incidents of this type ever recorded between January and June; 12% of these involved physical violence.

As with all of Maccabi GB’s programmes educating about antisemitism, Stand Up! ensures participants learn about the history and diversity of Jewish life and culture in the UK, as well support in unpacking historical and contemporary manifestations of anti-Jewish hate. In 2025, over 50% of antisemitic incidents recorded by CST referenced or were linked to Israel, Palestine, the Hamas terrorist attack or the subsequent war. As a result, all of our workshops ensure students explore the complexities of navigating the discourse surrounding Israel and Palestine and its relationship to the hate experienced by the Jewish community here.

This month we celebrated the latest cohort of the Alan Senitt Upstanders Leadership Programme, bringing together 100 Year 10 students from different faiths, cultures and backgrounds. Over the course of the programme, they have explored identity, prejudice and leadership before turning that learning into social action projects tackling issues ranging from disability and religious discrimination to gender inequality. Earlier seminars encouraged students not simply to discuss leadership, but to consider what kind of leaders they themselves wanted to become.

The next cohort is already being prepared, with nine London schools set to participate in 2026/27.

At a time when conversations around identity, difference and discrimination can become increasingly difficult, these programmes demonstrate a different approach. They create opportunities for people to meet, learn, ask questions and understand one another.

Maccabi GB will always be proudly rooted within the Jewish community. But being proudly Jewish and being fully engaged in British society are not competing ideas. They reinforce one another.

And through sport, education and meaningful relationships, we will continue doing our part to make both our community and the society around us stronger.