Best Corporate Social Responsibility Scheme
Everton in the Community
Everton in the Community, in partnership with Fans Supporting Foodbanks, St Andrew’s Community Network and Your Local Pantry, supports individuals and families with a member-run food pantry, available for everybody to access in the local community.
The initiative follows on from Everton’s Blue Family campaign, which supported over 29,000 individuals and families with urgent support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the effects of the pandemic, alongside the rise in the cost of living continuing to take its toll on families, the pantry aims to reduce food poverty by providing communities access to a wide range of top-quality food in return of a small subscription fee as well as other key services.
The core focus of the pantry is to provide a member-centred, community-driven, holistic support service that helps to tackle poverty in all forms. We aim to ensure that our members have access to affordable good food and fuel support but also view food as a hook, a tool that enables us to engage with typically hard-to-reach and hard-to-help people. Once families are engaged, we work with them to help improve quality of life and encourage positive life choices.
Ewood Experience, Blackburn Rovers FC
Ewood Experience are the Sodexo Live! team at Ewood Park, the home of Blackburn Rovers FC. Our role is to ensure a busy and successful operation of the stadium on non-match days and provide the catering on match days.
Social value underpins our strategic business ambitions, focusing on four impact pathways – our People, our Planet, our Places and our Partners. Over the past season, we have developed various goals and strategies to achieve our ambition of leading the way to improve quality of life for society and our planet.
The stadium has become plastic-free having switched all cups and pint carriers to paper versions. The team are reducing fuel consumption and oil waste is processed in a sustainable way meaning. In 2022/23, no waste from the stadium has been sent to landfill.
We have worked alongside Blackburn Community Trust reduce child hunger during school holidays, worked with community support group ‘Sliding Doors’ and opened our doors to the public to provide a warm space and free hot drinks during the economic crisis. We have recently partnered with Change Please coffee a social enterprise, whose profit goes to giving people experiencing homelessness a living wage job, housing, training and opportunities.
Liverpool FC
As Liverpool Football Club’s Official Sustainable Protein Partner, Quorn set out to drive real impact through making lives better in local communities. Through this the commitment and their partnership with the Club, Quorn identified the opportunity to help tackle the issue of food poverty in the Merseyside region, and thus the Double The Donations campaign was born in 2022. The campaign aimed to educate fans of both Liverpool FC and Everton FC ahead of the Derby at Anfield and encourage them to bring food donations for local foodbanks. Quorn then committed to doubling this amount of food, as the name of the campaign suggests. In total, 1.6 tonnes of food were donated to local foodbanks in the Liverpool area through the generosity of Reds, Blues, and Quorn.
Newcastle United FC
Newcastle United launched their first Christmas campaign, A Helping Hand at Christmas with the aim of supporting the local community.
The objective was to reach and support as many people as possible through a series of activities taking place throughout December, using four pillars of work:
• Financial support for the West End Foodbank
• Staff volunteering programme
• Support for local hospitals
• Providing free, warm spaces for families
All employees at the football club had the opportunity to play a part in the campaign, from ownership volunteering at the foodbank to help distribute hundreds of care parcels to families, first team men and women footballers attending hospitals to visit young patients and donate financial support to the wards, through to staff volunteering and offering support at Newcastle United Foundation’s warm space.
Summarising the club’s work in December, the West End Foodbank said the club’s support ‘would save lives.’
Plymouth Argyle FC
Project 35 is Argyle’s landmark community social action initiative, in partnership with Ginsters, aimed at reducing poverty in Devon and Cornwall through a comprehensive campaign of fund and awareness raising, social outreach, food donations, education, and charity support. A project close to our heart and in-line with our core values, and a chance to give back to our communities.
The first six months has already delivered almost 30,000 meals to those most in need, 2.6 tonnes of food collected for local food banks, free education and wellbeing sessions delivered to 1,517 children, 1,200 volunteering hours from ‘Pledge 35’ volunteers, 307 hampers delivered to the most deprived areas of Plymouth, 183 hours of community volunteering from Ginsters staff, 220 match tickets, 15 mascot experiences, and 212 Argyle shirts gifted to those most in need – and we’re just getting started.
Tottenham Hotspur
In the aftermath of an increase in youth violence, and with concern about a lack of youth provision available to young people throughout the summer, Tottenham Hotspur and Tottenham Hotspur Foundation created a programme of free summer holiday activity to help young people in the area engage in positive activity, whilst promoting health and wellbeing and reducing levels of crime in the process.
Summer of Spurs saw football and multi-sports activity for young people of all ages and abilities take place at N17 Arena – a community hub located on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium campus and at Duke’s Aldridge Academy every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday throughout August.
During the day, young people were able to come along and enjoy a range of sports including football, basketball, and NFL flag football, plus music and performing art workshops. Then in the evening, coaches from the Club’s Global Football Development team delivered technical player development sessions.
There were special guest appearances from Men’s first team players Ben Davies, Ryan Sessegnon and Djed Spence, Club Ambassadors Ledley King, Jermain Defoe and Michael Dawson, Spurs fan and one of the UK’s largest rap artists AJ Tracey and Tottenham Hotspur Women’s former captain, Jenna Schillaci.
