Crawley Town Community Foundation: End of August round-up

Firstly, the Foundation’s Soccer Schools summer programme finished on Friday, with five weeks of half-term football hugely successful this year. The football sessions ran each weekday during the holidays and, with most of the weeks sold-out, it ended at near full-capacity to round off a brilliant summer for aspiring players.

Elsewhere, the Foundation’s Premier League Kicks programme has been active at the Broadfield Stadium, with the recent Youth Council meeting to carry out social action projects around Crawley; this proving a success with the refugee clothes collection drive that partnered up with local churches and charities. The free recreational football and volunteering initiative will also see changes at its Broadfield Stadium sessions on Friday evenings - the Girls Premier League Kicks session will take place 5-6pm, with mixed sessions for ages 8-12 years between 6-7pm and 13-18 years 7-8pm.

The Foundation’s Community Development Manager Matt Calver explained the changes:

“As part of our team that runs Premier League Kicks, we thought of ways how we can improve our sessions throughout this year. One of the ways we thought we’d do this is by changing the times on a Friday night. The reasons behind this is because we've listened to our Kicks members that wanted to change the time, so this is influenced by its members and something that we’re pleased to announce.”

The changes will take effect from Friday September 8th.

The Community Development department has also announced that it will be teaming up with Abode Living to help support weekly wellbeing activities with its residents. The aim is to work with ages 8-18 as part of the group’s ‘build better lives’ initiative; the Foundation will deliver multi-sports at the Sutherland Quarters building to help provide opportunities for people that might not otherwise participate.

Deborah Stainforth, Community Engagement Officer at Abode Living, said: “Our support programme has been developed around early needs education for the children and young adults living in our communities. Wellbeing, physical and social activities are crucial to families in social housing and we are delighted that this partnership with Crawley Town Community Foundation, will serve those pillars of our support.”

In other news the Education Academy teams released their fixtures for the National Football Youth League season that starts next month. The promoted South Premier side begin the season away to Barnet and Southgate College’s Tottenham Hotspur team on the 13th September, with the South Reserves away to QPR College two days later.