We are proud to be recipients of the Sheffield & Hallamshire County FA’s (SHCFA) 2019 Grassroots Project of the Year Award for our Football for Food campaign, which is part of SHCFA’s 2019 Grassroots Awards.
We have run a Football for Food campaign since 2015, which has involved AFC Unity as a club encouraging players, management and supporters from both teams alongside the general public to come to our home games not only to watch a good game of grassroots football but also to bring donations of food that we then distribute to local Sheffield food banks, especially Fir Vale, Parson Cross, Firth Park, S20 and more recently S2.
The campaign is also about raising awareness of the extent of food poverty, the reasons for why more and more people are going to food banks to not only help increase the donations but also tackle any misconceptions and stigma for why food banks exist. So far we have collected 1193 kilograms of food.
This last season we have developed a close connection with the S2 food bank, who are near to our home ground, which we will be continuing next season with our regular home game food collections. We have also done specific campaign collections on Period Poverty, raising awareness of the issues related to this as well.
Thank you to everyone that took part in our Football for Food campaign last season, and a special thanks to our Integrity Award winner Jaimee Reeve who took a key role in leading the campaign.
Commenting on the award, Jaimee said “the generosity of AFC Unity players, manager, supporters and opposition players has allowed the Football for Food campaign to support those in need in the community. The FA award is fantastic recognition of the positive good AFC Unity does.”
The SHCFA stated regarding the Awards: “we received over 130 nominations across this years categories with some fantastic entries included. A selected awards panel reviewed all the nominations before eventually agreeing our local winners. All our winners have all also been nominated for The FA National Grassroots Awards which have yet to be selected. It was great to see so many nominations entered for this years awards and it really highlights the great work that goes on across the county within local grassroots football. The Sheffield & Hallamshire County FA Grassroots Awards Evening will take place in October with date TBC.”
