You may have spotted on twitter/facebook that Eniola very kindly donated her winnings to KitAid and mentioned her support of our work during the programme.

This resulted in immediate social media activity and some positive feedback and interest.

It really does prove the power of national TV coverage and hopefully there will be more to follow.

Since the last update we have held our first ever boxing up away from Hatfield and the first session of 2016.

The boxing up in Manchester went really well and it was a great learning experience.  A very big thank you to Janet (Neville) for all of the organising and to Peter (Moulds) for persuading FC United of Manchester to allow us the full run of their very impressive new ground.

We had full access to all of the rooms and we quickly found out the best way to set things out to keep the production line moving.  Altogether an impressive 70 boxes were packed and they all left the stadium with different charities plus a few that were sent to storage for later pick up.

We proved it can work and Janet is looking to hold the next session in April when FC United have an away match.  We will let you know the details but for any of our helpers north of Birmingham, it would be great to see you.

Our first session of 2016 in Hatfield went well and all 133 boxes packed are now on the way to Africa.  Our next session will be on Sat 5 March 2016, so please do reply to the recent invite sent by Claire if you haven’t already done so.

You may recall that we were contacted last year by some people in Canberra who wanted to set up a version of KitAid.  I have recently been in touch with them and they are soon to send their very first container shipment to The Gambia, having spent most of 2015 collecting kit donations from all across Australia. See their local news story.

A couple of weeks ago I received a similar contact from someone in America and have entered into a dialogue with him sharing much of the same advice I gave to the Canberra team. 

I am not sure if anything will develop from this but if it does it will be incredible to think that little old KitAid has spread across the globe and will be operating on 3 different continents as well as supporting kit projects in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America!! 

Amazing.

You may be aware that we have a policy of considering grant application requests for amounts of circa £1,000 when our funds allow.  We have worked with the Malalo Sports Foundation in Zambia for a number of years and at our Trustee meeting in January agreed to consider their latest grant request. 

The project will cover three distinct areas,

  • Clearing land for 2 football pitches, 2 Volleyball courts and 2 Netball courts
  • Purchase of sports equipment
  • Health Education and Football Coaching courses with the aim of re-integrating some young people who have dropped out of school via scholarships.

We will receive regular feedback as the project progresses and will release the funds in 2 separate transactions.

We also agreed to continue our sponsorship of the brilliant Ballysillan YFC Football Camp in Belfast for a further year.