We're delighted to announce that the Harrogate Town Community Foundation have received a grant which will help support our work within local schools over the next 12 months.
More specifically, the funding provided allows our foundation to continue educating local primary school teacher's on delivering high quality PE lessons and improving their confidence to do so.
In addition, it will help us to continue inspiring young people to be physically active within school as well as joining community clubs outside of school.
As well as providing PE lessons and sport based activities, the Community Foundation have been heavily involved in programmes such as the Reading Stars which inspires children to fall in love with reading and understand the benefits of why it is so important.
On top of this, the Foundation has been able to build strong relationships with schools in the local area.
For example, in July 2021 the Community Foundation worked together with Saltergate Junior School's year 4 Morpurgo class to put together a social action plan which would help the local community.
The children were supported by coaches from the Community Foundation and came up with the idea to organise a litter pick around the school grounds and Jennyfield area of Harrogate.
The process involved writing up their own social action before dividing into 2 groups and pitching ideas to their head teacher Mrs Mortimer.
Once the litter pick was agreed, Morpurgo class wrote letters to the council requesting litter picking equipment and once they said yes, the class went out with teachers and Community Foundation coaches, collecting 12 big bags of litter in the space of 2 hours around Jennyfields.
The litter pick gave the children ownership and the motivation to want to help their community, as Mrs Mortimer explained.
“It has been great to be involved with the social action project through Harrogate Town. It has opened the children's eyes, what a community means and what the benefits are to helping the community.”
Mrs Mortimer continued, “The children have loved having Harrogate Town in school and feel very proud of themselves for deciding on a project, how they could do it, asking for help and then finally following through and completing the litter pick. The children even want to go out and do it again both at home and in school.”
Harrogate Town Foundation Community Officer Tom Blackburn has played a key role in delivery of programmes and is looking forward to helping make a difference in the town.
“We are excited to continue the delivery of Premier League Primary Stars. The funding we receive from the NLT allows us to inspire and engage with even more young people within Harrogate and District. The holistic content included in the programme means everybody develops a wide range of skills and knowledge.”
Information on the National League Trust and Premier League Primary Stars
Founded in 2010, the National League Trust is a charity that that distributes grant support to community projects connected to National League clubs, with the aim of supporting and developing their community involvement.
Funding is made possible by the generous support of the Premier League and the Professional Footballers Association Charity, who have committed to support the Trust until 2022. They will each contribute to a donation of £1.2m a year during this period.
Inspiring children to learn, be active and develop important life skills, Premier League Primary Stars connects learning to the real world of sport and is helping to raise the aspirations of boys and girls in primary schools across England and Wales.
Using curriculum-linked teaching resources for PE, PSHE, English and maths and the appeal of the Premier League and professional football clubs, pupils are engaged both in the classroom, playground and at home. Visit PLPrimaryStars.com for more details.”
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