Blackpool FC Community Trust column: Plenty of positivity in the air this week

First of all, our Christmas fundraising campaign – to raise money to provide a gift for children that would potentially not receive a present on Christmas morning – has been a resounding success.

In just over a week we have raised an amazing £36,446 from our community, local businesses, fans, and our first-team players and staff.

This has been an unbelievable effort by everyone and is a true indication of what can be achieved when we all come together for a greater cause.

We have now been busy sourcing gifts and the Trust team have been wrapping all the gifts and putting the treat boxes together – and we also had our first-team players helping on Thursday with this.

This whole campaign is a prime example of why I am so proud to be part of Blackpool. Thank you to everyone that has supported.

We have also, this week, completed the delivery of our Autumn NCS programme and have reached an amazing 471 young people from September to December.

The young people had to engage in a very different format to the usual residential-based programme, which included personal development sessions delivered locally or on Zoom over a week, and then they engaged in 30 hours of social action projects.

We have worked very closely with our own BFC Sports College students, Blackpool and Fylde College and Park Academy to engage all the young people.

Our figure is the most engaged by any club in the country over this period.

Out of 28 clubs delivering, the second highest figure engaged was Blackburn Rovers, who worked with 249, so not only were we the highest but we achieved that mantle by a considerable margin.

Another provider of NCS in Blackpool worked with eight young people in the autumn so, again, it shows the impact BFC can have in engaging young people into positive activity.

Our NCS team have worked tirelessly to find a positive way to still deliver in this current Covid-19 world and they have done an amazing job, which we are really proud of and shows again the fantastic impact we are having on our community.

We are now delivering an NCS college support element of the programme, working with a further 400 young people from Blackpool and Fylde College on British values, and every secondary school in March on exam preparation with year 11 pupils.

December 7 also saw the one-year anniversary since we officially opened our Education and Community Centre at Bloomfield Road.

The impact this facility has had on our provision, also allowing us to run the food and isolation hub during lockdown, has been enormous on the Community Trust and our local community.

It has given our Sports College a home to deliver fantastic education in a safe environment and allowed us to extend our support to local children, during evenings with Kicks clubs and youth work sessions, as part of our ‘Tower Above’ programme.

A huge amount of gratitude must be shown again to the Football Foundation and Blackpool Football Club in supporting us on this development, which we still hope is only part one of a four-phase plan I have for the area and our facility developments.

Hopefully I can share more information very soon.

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