An update from our Football in the Community department
It’s been another great year for the Trust which has seen further growth in both personnel and a big growth in the number of varied football and non-football projects we deliver to our local community.
As a registered charity we look to represent the Club in the wider community using the power of football to be at the heart of communities. We rely on raising our own funds through both our coaching activities as well as grant funding from the Premier League, Football League, FA and PFA and support from the main Club and our main sponsor easyJet. Additional partnerships with Active Luton, Luton Adult Learning, The Princes Trust, Luton Airport’s Luton Youth Community Fund and StreetGames has enabled us to both expand our existing activities and begin lots of new and exciting projects.
We now provide over 70 free PE lessons every week to over 2,000 local school children as part of the Premier League School Sport project. Our girls only coaching has really taken off with support from the FA as part of the Female Football Development programme to increase the number of women and girls enjoying football and the link with Luton Town Ladies is working well in providing player pathways.
Our growing involvement in Disability Football has also been hugely rewarding for both staff and participants and as well as our two Men’s teams the Hatters and Boaters we also now coach weekly sessions at both Weatherfield and Woodlands SEN Schools.
We've also increased our football tournaments this year with the Hatters Cup involving 1,200 youngsters playing at Kenilworth Road we also involve hundreds of additional youngsters in the national Kinder+Sport Girls and Kids cup as well as our FFD female tournament. We also have our Integration Cup with Active Luton for boys from Marsh Farm, Farley Hill and Lewsey Farm at the stadium which forms an important part of our social projects on these estates.
Our airport-funded project has also been hugely successful in establishing youth football teams in Marsh Farm for the first time in years and we are now concentrating on doing the same in Farley Hill – with lots of other parts of Town on our radar. Luton Adult Learning are also helping us to find and train 36 new community coaches to deliver our projects with two courses for both men and women.
2016 will see lots of other exciting projects being delivered by our community staff around school literacy, attendance and behavioural issues and for our more mature community members we are also launching walking football as well as opening up the stadium for a weekly ‘social club’ where local members of our community can meet and chat.
We look forward to keeping everyone updated and engaged through these pages during 2016 on all of our existing and new projects as we look to both promote Luton Town Football Club to new supporters and also use the power of football to effect and improve the lives of as many members of our community as we can.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone. COYH!