Children at Richmond Park have been enjoying weekly football sessions, ‘Kicks’, supported by our recent Community Investment funding.
Sheffield Wednesday Community Programme is the South Yorkshire football club’s charity platform that gives something back to the community, to help develop cohesion and engage its diverse members in getting active.
Their four key themes are: Participation; Youth and Integration; Health; and Education, offering a range of ways to engage with football and getting active, as well as providing a choice of post-16 and higher education degrees and traineeship for adults of all ages.
The club has engaged with over 40 schools across South Yorkshire. Their participation arm nurtures primary school-aged children into getting active, with their Primary Stars Programme, Match Day parties and soccer camps. They also support children and young people in secondary school and beyond through their Youth and Integration arm, and co-ordinate the government’s Holiday Activities and Food programme for the area, making them well placed to support children to thrive in the cost of living crisis.
The programme recently received £8,000 in funding from our Greater Together Foundation Resilience Fund to do more of this work with school-aged children, in a way that also helps us rejuvenate the community centre at Richmond Park, one of our key neighbourhoods.
This fund is a broader initiative from our Community Investment Team to respond to the highest inflation in the UK in four decades. The total fund of £200k has been distributed on a commissioning basis by Community Partnership Managers to organisations that can demonstrate services to our customers around a few core themes, including:
The team have been running a weekly youth group at the community centre on Thursdays after school since late April, with food also available. This was organised following outreach work by the Inclusion Team at SWFCCP who met young people and their parents and guardians in the community in the weeks running up to the launch of the sessions to discuss what would be on offer. With support from Great Places, they also promoted these sessions in local schools.
The Kicks Sessions are a great regular feature for our rejuvenated community centre, and sessions are set to continue into the summer holidays, which will be great for keeping young people connected and active, especially with the exciting additional holiday sessions including multi-sports activities in the nearby green space.
The Greater Together Resilience funding has been essential for facilitating SWFCCP’s work in this area, and the partnership has opened the doors to engage with new schools. As Paul Hebda, Youth and Integration Manager at Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, commented:
This funding has supported SWFCCP to gain access and broaden our universal community approach, creating and developing new partnerships with partners as well as links to new schools, such as Athelstan Primary School, where the team will be supporting with the 2023 sports day. Here the team will also promote the community activities being delivered, potentially reaching out to more children and young people.
The funding has also massively benefitted the community, with the team already engaging with 20+ young people in the community to date, where the project and sessions have only been running for just over a month now, and will continue to grow and develop by the week.
And there’s more than just football sessions too – other activities and support on offer include providing volunteering opportunities for ‘senior young people’ to get involved in, which is aimed at helping them to develop their interpersonal and communication skills and aspirations and working with them to set goals, signposting to post-16 opportunities. Alongside this, there are open access activities delivered by SWFCCP staff to nurture youth voice, with sessions centring around speaking and feedback. Commenting on the success of the partnership, our Community Partnerships Manager, Steven Gayle, said:
Great Places is pleased to be working in partnership with Sheffield Wednesday Community Programme in delivering the Kicks session at Richmond Park Community Centre. The response from local young people has been overwhelming and the feedback from parents, residents and the local primary school has also been very positive.
This is a real boost to the community at Richmond Park and it’s great to see the benefits in action both during term time and during school holidays.
