Each week, Northampton Town Community Trust work with over 1000 people across Northamptonshire through 30 different projects that help improve people’s health, build stronger, connected communities and enhance life opportunities. On Saturday we celebrate and raise awareness of this work and ask each supporter to donate just £1 on the day to help continue to fund the life changing work the charity does.
The game against Crawley Town has been designated as this season’s Community Day for the Northampton Town Community Trust, the club’s official charitable arm, so the organisation is aiming to take the opportunity to highlight the extent of the huge amount of work that goes on in the community.
The Northampton Town Community Trust was formed in 1994 and became a registered charity in 2001 with the mission of using the unique appeal of the football club to connect communities and improve people’s lives. Based at the stadium, they deliver a range of projects and programmes across the county covering themes of education, health, disability and sports participation. Through their disability projects alone, each week the Community Trust regularly support over 120 participants to take part in structured activities.
Health projects being delivered such as Extra Time Hubs have helped to reduce loneliness in older adults, whilst Fitter Fans and Man v Fat programmes have supported men to lose over 739kg of weight in the last year (and counting!). Other health projects have seen specially trained coaches support people with drug and alcohol issues on their road to recovery and help more men and women stay active through weekly turn up and play sports sessions.
The Northampton Town first team squad are quick to lend their help to the Community Trust when their training schedule allows them to. This summer, players such as David Cornell, Steve Arnold, Sam Hoskins, Jordan Turnbull, Nicky Adams and Chris Lines as well as other members of the squad all made appearances at different times at our Soccer Schools. Just last week Billy Waters and Matty Warburton went down to support mental health football sessions that the Community Trust deliver in partnership with St Andrews Healthcare as well, whilst Keith Curle delivered a training sessions to support the ladies and girls programmes.
Phillip Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Northampton Town FC Community Trust, hopes that the 'bring a pound to the ground' initiative will be as successful at the PTS Academy Stadium as it has been at a number of other EFL clubs. He explained:
“The ‘bring a pound to the ground’ initiative has proven to be very successful at a number of clubs and has helped many club charities to fulfil some excellent programmes thanks to the support of their fans," he said.
“Our focus is on our disability and health programmes for this year’s Community Day fixture and hopefully the money raised will help us to expand the range of people we can support in these areas to make an even bigger impact.
“With a big crowd expected to come and enjoy this fixture, we hope that our fans will be able to support our appeal and help to ensure that those attending our weekly disability football coaching sessions and health programmes can go on to experience the thrill of representing Northampton Town Football Club and to do so with pride.”
If you are not able to get to the game but wish to donate you can do so by visiting our JustGiving page, justgiving.com/northamptontown-communitytrust. Alternatively you can call 01604 683726 or email community@ntfc.co.uk for more information and ways to donate.
For more information on the projects and programmes the community trust deliver and ways you can get involved visit: ntfccommunity.co.uk