I hope you are all well and looking forward to the festive weeks ahead.
November was another busy month with a full boxing up session at Hatfield and regular donations from the containers. The new totals are as follows.
Total items of kit donated in November – 10,426
Total items of kit donated in 2023 – 92,816
Total items of kit donated since 1998 – 1,026,468
I have decided to take a break from handing over kit from the containers in December as I have hurt my hip/back and lifting boxes aggravates it. Hopefully a rest will sort things out and it will give us some time to build up stock again ready for January and the new year. It is also freezing at the containers at this time of the year!!
£500 donation
Many thanks to the Paradigm Norton Trust from Bristol for a generous donation of £500. This came about as Regional Coordination Antonia applied to the Trust on our behalf. It then involved a short article being written about our work and how we would use any funds donated, for their committee to consider.
Thanks to Antonia for applying on our behalf and if anyone else knows of any Trusts who make charitable grants, please let me know.
Leverstock Green FC – Ambassador Club
Last Saturday Leverstock Green FC, from the Spartan South Midlands Premier League officially became the ninth Club/Trust to become a member of this exclusive club.
They have been very supportive with kit donations for a number of years and have also promoted our work with regular articles in their match day programme and displayed our banner pitch side, free of charge.
The Ambassador Club is for Step 3,4 & 5 non league clubs along with some Trusts and Societies.
The full list of Ambassador Clubs is as follows:
Chesham United FC, FC United of Manchester, Witton Albion FC, Stenhousemuir FC, Marine AFC, Everton in the Community, Diamonds in the Community, Hibernian in the Community and now, Leverstock Green FC.
Chelmsford City FC Collection
Many thanks to Chelmsford City FC who recently hosted a kit collection at their home game against Maidstone United.
Thanks to Barrie N for arranging this and for manning a stall before the match. This came about following Barrie’s successful “25for25” Challenge where he met the Club officials and built a relationship and understanding about our work.
2023 Christmas Card/2024 Thank You Certificate
Please find attached this year’s Christmas Card. Please send it on to any of your regular supporters.
The 2024 Thank You Certificate is currently with Carole to design and should be available as a printed version by mid to late January. In the meantime please continue to use the current certificate.
A very big thank you to Carole Parsons who does all of our design work free of charge and this year has been extremely busy with the 25th Anniversary brochure as well as the special logo, badges and other items. Carole retired but still does our work and even takes out time from visits to New Zealand to complete our work.
KitAid FC U14/U16’s
Congratulations to all of the boys from both teams, who last weekend played in the District Finals. The U14’s drew 1-1 but unfortunately lost on penalties and the U16’s won their match 4-0. They will now go on to represent the Mulanje District in the Regional tournament to decide which team becomes the champions of Malawi.
Sir Mo Farah
At the Hatfield Boxing Up session last week we were briefly joined by Sir Mo when he joined the session by video call and took us by surprise! He wanted to thank everyone for our hard work and for supporting projects in his homeland of Somalia. This obviously applies to everyone who is involved with KitAid, not just those at the boxing up session, so thank you to everyone from the legend, Sir Mo Farah.
I will send out an end of year update but if I don’t speak to you before, have a wonderful Christmas and thank you very much for making our 25th Anniversary year a special one. We couldn’t have done it without your support.
Happy Christmas.
Derrick