KitAid Monthly Update – May 2022

As the season has now come to an end I hope your teams met your hopes and if not, it is only a few weeks away, for you to dream again!

May has been a really good month in terms of raising our profile as well as sending out and receiving kit.  Here are the monthly totals and the main highlights.

Items sent out in May  –  8,365

Items sent out in 2022 –  38,870

Items sent out since 1998 – 859,822

Countries kit delivered to – Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Gambia, Zambia, Malawi

Premier League Today TV

After a couple of delays the film clip recorded at our Hatfield boxing up session in March was finally broadcast across Africa, South America, Asia and other non European continents.

It is a really professional recording and it tells the KitAid story from 1998 to the current day. There is some lovely film footage of the boxing up session as well as footage recorded by Fafali in Ghana.

It will soon be loaded on to our website as a News story and next month I will also share the link.

I have managed to build a good relationship with the researcher at PL TV and as he also works on other networks, he is going to try to get them interested in the KitAid story.

AMEX/Brighton & Hove Albion FC

We were contacted by the Agency who represent AMEX as they wanted to celebrate their 10 year anniversary of being the main shirt sponsor for Brighton. They ran a special “buy back” scheme for supporters which offered a free 2022/23 season shirt voucher in return for a donated Brighton shirt. They limited the offer to the first 250 supporters who dropped a shirt into the Club shop, and not surprisingly the vouchers were snapped up on the first day. There was a lot of publicity and it introduced us to a new club and group of supporters.

Thanks to Stuart, our local regional co-ordinator, for collecting all of the donated shirts.

90mins online

Some of you may already follow 90mins online and they have a very big social media presence with over 1 million followers. Throughout May they chose a different charity each week to promote and last week it was KitAid’s turn.

This certainly helps to raise our profile and other opportunities quite often follow.

Football Mum’s

This is an odd one!

I was contacted by an author who has written a “Top Tips for Football Mum’s” book as she wanted to include a section about recycling old kit. She has included KitAid in a few sections and I read the whole book to provide some feedback. It is a lovely guide to help Mum’s whose kids are starting off in junior football and it explains  things in a light hearted way. From what to wear on the touchline to the different footy terms.

Once it has been published I will share details for anyone interested.

Tring Tornadoes/Harpenden Colts

Both of these clubs are local to us and we have had a long standing relationship with them.

Once again they very kindly invited us to their end of season awards events where all players and parents were asked to bring along kit. A very big thank you to Stephen and Ed from each club and to Jo and Jeff who helped out at the Tring collection. We collected a lot of kit and were also able to share some of it for Ukrainian children who will soon be joining Tring Tornadoes.

If you are involved in a grassroots club and would like to host a similar collection please let us know.

Boots to Malawi

Mary from FOMO Malawi shared some photos of the boots the boys and men were playing in. They were torn and to be frank, dangerous, as they had no studs and were held together by tape. You may have seen the appeal for boots we promoted online and very quickly we collected 40 pairs of good quality boots.

Although we don’t usually send out kit ourselves, we made an exception and paid £230 for them to be air freighted to FOMO. They arrived this week and they will be handed out to the players this coming weekend.

Thanks to our Regional Co-ordinators

We are aware of how much work goes on in each region, especially at this time of the year, when many clubs change their kits. Although everything may not get mentioned in these updates, we are aware of how much you all do for us and we are extremely grateful. If you do have any particular donations or events you would like to be given a special mention, please let me know as I can always thank them on Twitter/FB or Instagram. A photo helps and if it includes children we do need permission to meet consent requirements.

Thanks everyone and best wishes

Derrick

On behalf of the KitAid Trustees