It's no secret that football is an inspiration to millions of people around the world. Premier Skills, a partnership between the English Premier League and the British Council, uses the beautiful game as an educational tool to groom young people from all over the globe. The program has been running since 2007 and has reached almost half a million youngsters in Asia, America and Africa. CGTN'S Julie Scheier has more.

Premier Skills kicked off its development programme back in 2007. It takes the game to the grassroots level. And is helping to develop the next generation of leaders, coaches and football stars in South Africa.

GRAHAM ROBINSON PREMIER SKILLS HEAD COACH "We want to engage as many young people as possible so for us it is training up coaches in order to give them the skills to go back into the communities and develop young players."

But it's all about teamwork. The skills intiative has trained over 2300 coaches, in over 20 countries. It has reached over 400 thousand people by working closely with local organisations to identify young hopefuls for its training course.

GRAHAM ROBINSON PREMIER SKILLS HEAD COACH "We are not the specialists in countries. We use the British Council because British Council is one of our partners. We also utilize SAFA, so our partners identify participants for us. We get people with no formal qualifications to come on phase one and that is where the journey for them starts."

MAVELA MADHLALA TEMBISA COACH "I hope to empower a lot of coaches and football players up and coming and basically through that it is going to help other youngsters which are up and coming because they have mentors who know and have an idea of what skills are required to actually push that through."

Drawing on the Premier League's vast expertise, it also helps tackle social challenges in communities.

JASMINE CORNELIUS HOUTBAY FOOTBALL COMMUNITY "There are a lot of challenges especially with the drug abuse and alcohol abuse especially for females so for me to be on top of my game and deliver good sessions and try to be positive and inspire especially the young females to see that there are more than all that bad stuff and this course has helped me to see that."

Premier Skills has no plans to call timeout on its programme. It wants to expand its reach beyond football, into other sporting codes. JULIE SCHEIER, CGTN, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA.