We have sponsored the week long footy camp again this year and we are really pleased to keep our link with Peter Thompson going.
A small team from KitAid will be visiting the project for the final day of the camp in July and we are looking forward to meeting Peter and his fantastic team again.
For those of you heard him presenting at the 15th Anniversary Dinner you know how inspirational his work is and we are proud to be associated with BYFC.
We are really pleased to report that Nick Perchard, the former CEO of Herts FA and now working for the Premier League, has accepted our invitation to fill the vacant Trustee position. Nick will be a great addition to the team and we look forward to working with him as a Trustee. Welcome on board Nick.
We have been chosen as one of the charities for this years Ricky Road Run, which is great.
To recognise their generosity, we will need to try and find some marshals to help out on the morning of the run, so if you live within driving distance of Rickmansworth, we would really like your help on Sunday 26 October.
You could also run the 10 miles if you are up for it!! The course is set in the Chilterns countryside but if you don’t like hills I would recommend marshalling!!
For more information about the run go to www.rickyroadrun.co.uk and if you're able to help, drop me a line on derrick.williams@affinitywater.co.uk
A massive well done and thanks to Barry on hitting his target of collecting 10,000 items of kit before the end of this season. Barry started collecting for us in January 2012 and he has meticulously documented every item, where it came from. His spread sheet is like a who’s who of every school and generous company in Merseyside. In addition, Barry also enlisted the help of a courier company in Liverpool to regularly collect from him and then deliver to our couriers in Harlow, at no cost to KitAid. This in itself must have saved us a substantial amount. We are thinking of the best way to celebrate Barry’s achievement and details will appear in a future monthly update.
Thanks Barry – you are an inspiration.
You may have already seen some of the publicity for the annual Easter kit amnesty held by the Evo-stik Northern Premier League. There has been an article on their website and details have been sent to every club, along with a poster we designed for the event.
Dave Watters, who is the press officer for the league has also promoted the collection to the Ryman League as well, as he manages their website. I have seen some interest on individual club sites, so we may get more response this year. Once we receive requests to collect the kit I will send out a list to the most local regional co-ordinators as we have in previous years. Any that are not close to an RC will be collected by our couriers.
We have recently received this great picture showing Watford FC kit in Wamba, northern Kenya.
The kit was taken out by Clare Muir from the Swan Youth Centre in Berkhamsted along with a group of students from Ashlyn’s School. Kit was also handed out to some girls school teams as well as three other schools. A game was arranged between Man Utd and Watford (Ashlyn’s students) and not surprisingly the reds won. Watford blamed the pitch and the heat!!
Well done to all and we look forward to supporting Clare again later this year.
We have been offered a couple of pre-booked slots for 2 people to abseil down the very impressive Spinakker Tower in Portsmouth. Each slot has been pre-booked for Sunday 25 May at 13.00 and they cost £85 each. We have been offered them by a supporter of KitAid in the hope that we will find a couple of willing volunteers who may be able to raise some funds for us as well as having a great time themselves.
If you or you know of anyone that is up for the challenge, please ask them to email ian.hankin@affinitywater.co.uk and he will pass all of the details on. We appreciate it is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially if you are afraid on heights, but please do try and persuade someone to rise (or descend!) to the challenge for us.
I know that some of you are already fans but last week we saw an example of how powerful it can really be. We had a fantastic photo of kids in Kenya wearing new Watford shirts which we tweeted and then WFC re-tweeted to their 27k followers.
Immediately the photo was being favourite, re-tweeted and we were getting new followers on our site. Within 90 minutes it had been re-tweeted 115 times, which for us is an incredible reaction and a great opportunity for all of those people to find out more about what we do.
To me it also shows the power of a good photo and the more we can get, the bigger the opportunities, especially with Premier League clubs. Watford will also be using the photo and an article in their next home programme, so a few more thousand will get to read about us.
If you are not a fan already, do take a look at our site www.twitter.com/kitaid as we use it almost daily for the latest news.
Our friends from Stegota are desperately hoping to find a UK non league team who are more adventurous than most teams, to fund their own trip over to Kampala.
They will be treated like royalty, apart from during the matches which will be highly competitive, and have a fantastic experience to boot.
We have enlisted the help of Dave Watters, from the Evo-stik Northern Premier League, to help promote their appeal across all of the clubs in the league.
I know some of you already have links with certain clubs (Barrow, Bishops Stortford, Marine, FC United etc) so if you could mention it to them you never know, someone might be up for the challenge.
We attended a volunteer fair last week at the UoH and once again it proved really useful in terms of signing up some more helpers and spreading the word. Thanks to Carly Benton for the invite and to the graduate trainees from Affinity Water who very kindly “manned” the stand for us. I am really keen to work with Universities, so if you do have any links that would be interested please pass them our way.
Finally, thank you to all of you out in the regions for your support and activities. There has been a lot happening recently where you have made some great contacts and collected a lot of kit for us. You really are the backbone of KitAid and we couldn’t carry on without your fantastic support.
KitAid is a charity founded by Derrick Williams MBE in 1998, to provide kit and equipment to those who do not have access to resources across Africa and the developing world.
Finding a home for your unwanted football kit in Africa and beyond.