Luton Town Community Trust Newsletter Issue 1 by Luton Town FC

COMMUNITY TRUST

LTFC COMMUNITY TRUST NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 1 | NOV 2016

Registered Charity | Charity No. 1123078

SPORT | EDUCATION | HEALTH | INCLUSION

HATTERS TRUST TEAM UP WITH PRINCES’ TRUST

Last month the Hatters Community Trust teamed up with the Prince’s Trust to run a ‘Get Started into Sports Leadership’ programme for local 16 to 25 year olds who are currently out of work and not in training or education, with participants gaining a Level 1 Sports Leaders Award. The ‘Get Started’ programme ran for 5 days and no sooner had the course finished than several of the learners joined our coaching staff in High Town to volunteer with Saturday morning football sessions. One learner, Tye said ‘gaining my level 1 and putting on the Luton tracksuit to coach young kids was a dream come true’. Narrow miss on league titles

Our two PAN Adult Men’s Disability Football teams narrowly missed out on two league titles recently as the 2016 local leagues came to a climax at the end of October. [more on page 2]

Hatters Girls debut

October half term week saw the very first official Hatters Girls fixtures against Peterborough United and Swansea City who all made the journey to Creasey Park Community Stadium in Dunstable. [more on page 2]

Copyright 2016 © Luton Town FC Community Trust. All Rights Reserved. Kenilworth Stadium, 1 Maple Road, LUTON LU4 8AW 01582 737568 | Charity No. 1123078 community@lutontown.co.uk Childline: 0800 11 11 Dedicated Historic Helpline: 0800 023 2642

Praise for KICKS scheme

Last week our first KICKS fixture took place at Lea Manor Recreation Centre, in Marsh Farm, with visiting team QPR FC. The Hatters team consisted of players from both Lewsey Farm and Marsh Farm. [more on page 2] lutontown.co.uk/club/community facebook.com/ltfc.communitytrust twitter.com/ltfc_community

Hatters PAN men’s disability football teams narrowly miss out on league titles Back in March this year our two teams the ‘Hatters’ and ‘Boaters’ began their league campaigns at the Beds FA Disability League held every Friday at Skimpot Lane. Both squads finished runners up in their respective divisions as theseason concluded last month. Hatters Trust head, Kevin Thoburn commented ‘another successful season for both teams who every week leave their ‘disabilities’ on the touchline for a couple of hours and show us their football abilities instead.‘

Hatters Girls Player Development Centre makes debut October half term week was the very first Hatters Girls PDC fixtures against Peterborough United and Swansea City who all made the journey to Creasey Park in Dunstable. Sitting down with Luton Town Ladies FC at the end of last season we quickly agreed what Luton lacked was a Development Centre in Luton for all girls that would provide established training squads up to U16 age groups that could eventually provide elite pathways for girls aged 16+ to Luton Town Ladies 1st team and Development squads. Between us we agreed that most importantly we should make the commitment to all local girls to offer the same opportunities as we do for our boys – to wear the shirt and represent their local Professional Football Club

KICKS Programme is praised by Beds Police The Premer League KICKS projects aims to use football as a hook to engage and target young people and attempt to divert them away from crime and ant-social behaviour. Last month we played our first KICKS fixture with QPR visiting Marsh Farm to play the Hatters with teams made up from both Lewsey Farm and Marsh Farm boys. Supt Sharn Basra of Bedfordshire Police attended on the day and commented that ‘I was honoured alongside rising star and local role model Tyreeq Bakinson to select the MOTM in what was not just a great advert for the work of the Trust, but a really entertaining game of football”

Euro’s bringing communities together... This summers real Euro’s may have been a disappointment (understatement of the century!) but our very own schools Luton Junior Euros was a great success. We teamed up with the Council’s Strategic Community Services and Community Safety Partnership as well as teamBeds@Luton, School Games, Arriva, Vauxhall and Bedfordshire Police with the theme of ‘Bringing Communities together through Football’. The project was aimed at school children in year 5 and the Trust delivered coaching sessions into local schools alongside the Police who held workshops around ‘hate crime’ and bullying. Overall 19 schools took part with over 230 participants playing in the finals day football tournament. Rachel Hopkins, Portfolio Holder for Community Development said: ‘In addition to being fun, exciting and educational, the tournament is a brilliant way of bringing our different communities together’. Sandra Hayes, Strategic Community Services Manager at LBC said ‘as well as bringing different communities together, the event highlighted how well people in Luton get on with each other and how football can help to create bridges across different areas of the town’.

COMMUNITY COHESION AWARD The Trusts work was recognised earlier in the year by the Bedfordshire Police Community Cohesion Team led by Inspector Hob Huque principally for our its’ work with young adults in Lewsey Farm and Marsh Farm around gang prevention. Daniel Douglas, The Community Operations and Inclusion manager, who runs our Community Integration Through Sport (KITs) project with Active Luton received the Community Cohesion Award award in recognition of the’ Trust’s continuous work toward community cohesion’.

Trust’s annual impact valued at over £2.5 Million An evaluation report by leading research and technology company Substance commissioned to appraise the work of the Luton Town Community Trust and assess the difference it makes to the lives of thousands of children, young people and young adults in Luton and Bedfordshire has determined that the minimum value of the club’s community work was £2,539,000 during the period from 1st April 2015 to 31st March 2016. Based on the research, during this period it was found that the Club’s Community Trust delivered almost 60,000 hours of activities, including over 1,000 individual sessions reaching over 3,500 individual participants every week.

Community Weekend An incredible 1,800 local footballers both young and old played out their dreams on the hallowed Kenilworth turf over the Trust’s 9th annual community football week-end in May as the Club once again turned over the stadium to the local community. Spread over a 3 day week-end in May at the end of each season, the Trust organises a number of tournaments and special events on the pitch at the Stadium for all members of the local football community. Fridays sees a variety of events that this year included both adult and children’s disability football training sessions and tournaments along with a separate girls football tournament before finishing off with the Integration Cup for local teenagers from Lewsey Farm, Marsh Farm and Farley Hill. Saturday and Sunday sees the Hatters Cup youth football tournament taking place with over 150 local teams competing in various age groups which along with over 3,500 enthusiastic parents and spectators during the week-end taking the overall total of participants and spectators accessing the stadium in just three days well past the 5,000 mark.

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