KitAid Monthly Update – January 2022

First of all I would like to welcome Richie Gilham to the team as a new Regional Co-ordinator for Liverpool. We have known Richie for a number of years as he is our main contact at the Everton Heritage Society and has been instrumental in securing the use of St Luke’s, Goodison for boxing up sessions.  Thanks Richie and welcome to Team KitAid!

 

January has seen us getting off to a good start and here are the latest monthly totals

 

Items donated  –  7,910

Total items donated since 1998  –  828,862

Countries supported in January  –  Ghana, Romania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Cape Verde, Zimbabwe and Nigeria.

 

Thank You certificates

I have posted out 25 packs to Regional Co-ordinators who I do not see regularly and given some out to local helpers who I have met up with. I will try to hand over the remaining packs but if you need them now, please let me know and I will find a way of getting some to you. Many thanks to Carole for designing them and arranging printing.

 

Boxing Up

We held an outdoor session on Saturday morning at Hatfield as the storeroom was full. We handed over just over 2,100 items of mainly unsorted kit.

Hopefully the number of Covid cases will continue to fall and by the time the room is full again, we can return to indoor boxing up. This should be by March and we will review safety procedures in line with Affinity Water requirements at the time.

It will be wonderful to see everyone again after two very long years.

 

Sponsorship

We have a Trustee agreement not to sit on surplus funds while also being financially cautious to allow for any unexpected expenses. Where and when possible we make grants to support projects which fully meet our purpose. To enable people to participate in sport who may otherwise be disadvantaged through lack of facilities or required funds. We have given grants to the following partner charities as follows

 

FOMO Malawi  –  Sponsorship of KitAid FC teams for 2022  –  £1,000

FOMO Malawi  –  Sponsorship of Football, Netball, Athletics Bonanza in July 2022  –  £2,000

Bulindi Uganda  – Sponsorship of inter village team tournament to protect chimpanzees from poachers  –  £1,000

 

This still leaves us with an available balance of £11,500 to meet our costs in 2022, without any further funding.  Our annual costs for storage, courier collections and postage/marketing are in the region of £10,000.  Additional funding received in 2022 will allow us to meet any expansion costs and to consider other projects for support.

 

Annual Review

I now have a list of 20 stories from last year to write up and I hope to complete this by the end of February. It will then be sent out to people to proofread/sense check and once signed off, the hard work starts again as Carole has to design the layout with pictures, and squeeze it all into the available seven pages. It then goes off to the printers and copies will hopefully be mailed out to you in late March.

 

Activities

We have had a couple of events happening throughout the month which will soon be closing.

A very big thank you to www.matchwornshirts.com who have been collecting shirts from their customers for the “Coach the Coach” project in Ghana. Thanks also to @tomdedits and to all of the designers who have created wonderful AFCON players stickers. I have been posting the designs on our @kitaid sites and Tom has created a gallery on his site. As well as the designs over £200 has been donated on a special KitAid Just Giving page so far.

 

Thanks

As ever, we are very grateful to everyone for your support in collecting, storing and delivering kit for us.  A very big thank you to Tim (Twickenham) and Dave (Bradford) who also hired vans and delivered a full load to our containers in Hemel Hempstead.  This really helps as we not only save a courier collection fee but it is also quicker.

On Saturday (5 February), KitAid will be the match sponsor for the FC United of Manchester v Witton Albion FC match. Both teams are KitAid Ambasador Clubs. If you are looking for a good game to go to we can definitely recommend this one as the atmosphere at FC United games is special. A big thank you to Peter for arranging this.

 

Have a good February and keep well.

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