02 Aug
Last year, the community raised £4,800 as their commitment to supporting young people to join the summer football training camp with the FA registered football club, Unity FC. The funds raised last year could barely support 45 kids to join the camp although over 70 kids expressed interest in joining the camp. It was a very successful camp. Two of the girls were scouted by Wimbledon FC and they are fully enrolled in receiving more specialised training and support in the Wimbledon academy. Janet, pictured below with Michael and her sister are now registered professional players with Wimbledon FC. One boy is now with Arsenal and the other boy is now with Crystal palace. We do not have written permissions of the parents of the two boys to share their photos at present.
We took the bold step to apply for the Mayor of London sports unites fund last year and we were awarded £10,000 by the Mayor. We also approached groundwork who were very pleased with the support we were giving to kids with multiple levels of deprivation and they awarded £10,000 to us to support the kids with football kits, food during the summer holidays and to assist with their physical and mental wellbeing. We received £1000 from a benefactor who use to live on the Brandon as a kid but prefers to remain anonymous and a further £150 from the head of culture, environment and leisure. I am pleased to report that just after a week of starting the summer 2022 football training camp, we have enrolled about 96 children aged 5 to 10 and 37 children aged 11 to 17 or just under 18. Strikingly and perhaps in tune with the sporting prowess of the Lionesses in the Euro 2022 championship, we now have 37 girls in the camp this year.
Part of the funding requirement is that we need to expand and include more children in other parts of the borough and to attract children from other parts of London as part of the strategy to breakdown the post code rivalry and bring the children and the community together. Our approach is that it takes a village to raise a child!!! Informed pieces of research suggests that drug dealers have used the post codes to mark out their market areas and have set up rival gangs to protect their “spheres of interest.” Our hope is that by bringing the kids together to jointly enjoy their passion for sports, we can help to dissolve the post codes rivalry and put the drug dealers out of business!!!
We also working with the community early help panel who have a stall by the pitch and are engaging with the parents who come to drop off their kids. Sheila Benjamin, Chair of Brandon 3 TRA and I went to the Decathlon sports shop in surrey quays on Saturday the 30th of July 2022 to buy the kits for the children and met a number of young people with their parents from all over London who were very pleased with our initiative. As a result of this, we now have families travelling all the way from Tower Hamlets, Westminster, Waltham Forest, Chelsea to join the camp. It is simply awesome!! Sheila and I also met with 67 kids and their families in Burgess Park on Saturday the 30th of July 2022 and shared the leaflets about the camp and the reception was very positive. The outreach work with community leaders demonstrates the length residents would go to support initiatives that we co-create with them.
I am hoping that we can all work together to enrol at least 1,000 young people in sports by next summer. We also deliver maths, English and science lessons for the kids and two of the girls who have benefitted from our after school club initiative have submitted their applications to go to medical schools and we are anxiously awaiting the A level results this summer. I am always reminded that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and together we can make it happen!!!
If you would like to sign your child up to the summer camp, please use the link below:
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