I had an excellent meeting earlier this week with Darren Bernstein from The FA and Nick Perchard from our charity partner, The Herts FA. The meeting was to design a plan for KitAid and The RAF charity, Taking football to Africa, to receive surplus Umbro branded training kit from the 50 County FA’s across the country. Basically Nike will take over the contract from Umbro and all of the old kit needs to be disposed of in an environmentally sound way.

We will use our couriers as much as we can but there may be the need to call on you guys if there is a county FA office close by and they do not have a lot of kit to collect. I should find out in May which offices we will be asked to collect from so I will know more then.

We’ve set up an account for KitAid with Easyshopping and we now need to try and promote it to our supporters to encourage them to register.  It is really easy (hence the name!) and could be beneficial for us, as if you choose KitAid as your preferred charity we will recive a payment for every online purchase made with some really big organisations, i.e. Amazon, Argos, Tesco and hundreds more well known names.

If you do shop online please register and please encourage your friends to do the same.  It has been a very slow start, despite some publicity across Affinity Water, our web and twitter sites.

We always ask for feedback from the charities we partner with and in most cases we receive it. Sometimes we receive an email or letter which really stands out and makes you realise the power of what we do. The following did exatly that and the fact that our shirts have probably allowed 2 boys to attend a school which they could not previously afford to do, is quite humbling. Please see the following note received by Ben (van Nes) from one of his projects.

"We greatly appreciate your contribution to facilitate our programme of empowering youth through sports in Kenya. The provission of football kit from KITAID has made our dream come true.This could not have been possible without the KITAID team that has worked tirelessly to make a difference in people`s lives. The impact of football has been felt across the whole county of Bumula in Kenya. Youth are nolonger idling around shopping centres and being involved in antisocial behaviour.

Within the last 2 years 32 youth teams have been issued with football kits in Bumula county. 2 students who had been dropped out of school for lack of fees have been admitted in two sports oriented schools with free education bursaries. Their talent was sported by school sports representatives who attended one of our annual football events. These events are used to gather communities and mostly targetting youth to alleviate idleness and antisocial behaviour by engaging and empowering them on issues of health,unemployment, identity and self worth. This is done by organising interactive workshops and video clips.

5 primary schools received football uniform and it was very exciting when whole school Activities were paralysed,all class lessons cancelled and parade assembled just to receive the uniform. They had never had any uniform since the foundation of their schools which dates back as far as 1965.(Since Independence) They always played with one team removing their shirts (topless ) during their inter- school competitions, now they cant wait for the season to beggin. All this was made possible by contribution of Kits from KITAID. This years event which takes place in August will even be bigger and better, involving nearly 20 teams across the county and other 10 different sports activities"

Thanks to Helen for contacting Ellen White and for getting her interested in KitAid.

As a result she donated a mountain of her own England and Arsenal training kit and has expressed an interest in coming along to a boxing up session soon.

We held an official presentation at a St Albans City match in early Jan, when Ellens’s kit, some from Birmingham City Ladies, as well as St Albans, was handed over on a freezing half time pitch presentation.

Helen took some of the kit with her out to the Gambia and I have given some to Clare Muir for her trip to Kenya this month, so we should soon be able to show Ellen where her kit has ended up.

I have been trying to get Arsenal Ladies involved for a while now, as they are based at the local University of Herts and I think it is good for KitAid to help promote football for girls in Africa.