Kick it Out is an initiative that aims to work with young people to educate them on the wrongs of holding discriminatory views.
It has given away £60,000 to fund community projects during the One Game, One Community fortnight of action, which runs from 16-28 October.
The projects all bid successfully for up to £1,000 to run programmes that have a football theme and work with young people at risk of offending, or who have already offended. The projects will act as diversionary activities for young people in schools and youth clubs.
Piara Powar, director of Kick it Out, said it was important to work with marginalised young people in the community to prevent them from turning to crime. "A lot of the projects are working with young people who come under our target group of providing diversionary activities for young people who may be involved in crime or who work with the black and minority ethnic community and on anti-discriminatory issues," he said.
The projects will run individual programmes across England and Wales that all link in with the central message of tackling racism. "We want to provide an open space so people can tackle the problem," Powar said. "You find young people who may be territorial or have discriminatory views and we want to impact on that."
Huntercombe and Glen Parva young offender institutions are also taking part in the scheme, in order to give a chance for young people to talk about their experiences of racism.
Powar said the work in youth prisons would aim to give young people a role model, and there would be a panel to give young people the chance to put questions to prison staff, footballers and staff from Kick it Out.
"We want to raise the aspirations of the audience," he said. "We want to give a positive message about breaking the cycle that they have found themselves in. We want to bring more racial equality into prisons."
