The Children's Hospital Charity - We are now partners with Europe's biggest youth football league
Press Release:
http://www.tchc.org.uk/we-are-now-partners-with-europes-biggest-youth-football-league
We are now partners with Europe's biggest youth football league
9 January 2015
It is the biggest youth football league in Europe – with almost 12,000 boys and girls from within a 20 mile radius playing every Sunday – and counts England’s Gary Cahill, cricketing legend Michael Vaughan and Jamie Cook of the Artic Monkeys amongst its former members.
Since its inception in 1969, the Sheffield & District Junior Sunday League has proved itself as a footballing force to be reckoned with. In the last 60 days, it had nearly a million hits on the FA’s fulltime website, beating the nearest league’s web stats by 300,000.
Now, the league is carving out a charity partnership with The Children’s Hospital Charity – the first of its kind in youth football – which is set to provide the players with sponsorship, whilst giving back to a cause in the community.
Matt Hardman is chairman of the volunteer-run league and works full-time as an accountant for an IT firm. He said the partnership – which will see all monies raised through the league’s fundraising split 50/50 between themselves and the charity – will reap benefits on both sides.
He said: “This partnership is an ideal way of promoting the excellent work that both organisations do in the wider community. The Children's Hospital in Sheffield must over the years have had a number of our members through its doors either through football or non-football related accidents and illness.”
Since it was forged in September this year, the partnership has already generated over £10,000 for The Children’s Hospital Charity through a £1 registration fee per player being donated to the cause. There are plans in the pipeline for large-scale fundraising projects set to bolster the Charity’s Make it Better appeal and the league’s coffers.
David Vernon-Edwards, director of The Children’s Hospital Charity – which serves The Children’s Hospital, Sheffield, said: “We don’t know of any other football league that has done a partnership with a charity in this way. We are all about making kids healthy again – and the football league wants to promote healthy activities for kids. It is a perfect relationship. We want to encourage the children to get involved with their community – and through fundraising for us they can do that whilst contributing to development of their own league.
“The money raised for the Charity will help save lives. We are in the middle of our Make it Better appeal, which aims to raise £10m regionally by 2016 to transform our hospital – which has over 245,000 patient visits each year – into a world class facility to match the world class care and expertise. .”
Matt added: “It’s all about kids helping kids. It won’t just help the kids at the hospital, but the wider community of 7-16 year olds in South Yorkshire who can benefit from us improving our coaching and facilities. Any way we can use the money to improve the whole experience has got to be a good thing. In these days of trying to get kids out from their bedrooms playing on computers and partaking in sport, if we get more kids playing that has to be better for their long term health and wellbeing.”
Nathan Batchelor, league secretary, added: “The League is a children’s league and The Children’s Hospital Charity fits in perfectly. The League is without a paying sponsor, and has recently given away free divisional sponsorship to local charities. The Children’s Hospital Charity will be able to sell and promote the League to commercial partners that the League does not have contacts for. This will bring in much needed money for both the League and the Charity.”