Over the last 20 months, football has played a vital part in helping communities cope with the stress of the pandemic. National League Clubs and their charities have been involved in many local initiatives to help alleviate the impact of lockdown and restrictions.
They have continued to deliver activities and support partners through this difficult time. Over the weekend of 12 to 14 November, the NLT and the League are celebrating their contribution.
As a community, we found it an extremely challenging time but we’re extremely proud of the way we managed to continue delivering our services to the local area. Despite periods where we had to shut down our classes on-site, there were many projects we were proud to continue supporting!
Pete Foster, Community Trustee, stated, ‘after a turbulent 18 months of lockdowns and uncertainty, it has been fantastic to be able to provide this funded program for local children who have been so affected by the pandemic. The funding from Trafford Council has been very welcome along with their support, and we are looking forward to continuing this program in the coming school holidays’
Over the past 20 months, we delivered free school meals through the Department For Education Activity Fund Program, which saw over 800 children gain access to a free healthy lunch 5 days a week, as well as 4 hours of free physical activity. At a time when many families were struggling to cope with the pandemic, we were glad to be able to help ease the pressure in some way.
We ran this program through the Summer and Easter Holidays of 2020 as well as the Summer and Winter Holidays in 2021. For many children, this would be the only time they could gain access to professional coaches or any form of organized sport.
Lily, who attended our Holiday clubs, hugely enjoyed the sessions, stating, ‘I absolutely loved the holiday with Altrincham FC in the community, the coaches made the sessions really fun and it was great to be back playing sport with my friends. It was also great to meet some new friends from other schools.’
These programs were supported by: G-Force, Trafford Council, Oldfield Brow Primary School, and Broomwood Primary School and we would like to say a huge thanks to them as without them this would not have been possible.
Our primary sponsor was The National League Trust, a charity that offers grant aid towards the support and development of community projects at clubs in the League. Funding is made possible by the generous support of the Premier League and the Professional Footballers’ Association Charity, who have committed to support the Trust until 2022. They will each contribute to a donation of £1.2m a year during this period.