Ashton under Hill CC 2020 Covid-19 Fundraiser

Aim

To raise £4,000 PLUS £2,000 from Sport England to limit impact on 2020 income due to Covid-19, and ensure we can continue to build our Club.

Who are we?

Ashton under Hill Cricket Club is based at the foot of beautiful Bredon Hill in South Worcestershire. We have been playing cricket in the Village since 1907. We are a community club, open to all and run entirely by volunteers. Our aim is to encourage greater participation in cricket across all age groups and to ensure the Club is seen as a real asset to the Village by our local community

Why do we need your support?

We normally raise the funds we need to run the Club through subscriptions and match fees from members and bar takings, plus a number of social events through the year. With no cricket or social events possible so far in 2020, we estimate that we have lost around £8,000 in income. 

We are setting up this Crowdfunder to raise £4,000 ourselves(or more if we can!). In addition, if we are successful in hitting our own target, we will receive funding of £2,000 from Sport England. This will mean that we can protect our reserves as far as possible in order to plan for future development. A key ambition we have is to replace our current aged practice net (see below) with a new two lane facility on the opposite side of the Ground, which will require significant investment.

Our Club 

We have worked hard to build up our junior section both to support participation in the Sport by boys and girls and, in the longer term, to provide the adult players the Club needs to thrive into the future

We are a small club working in a limited catchment area as many villages around Bredon Hill have their own cricket teams, but we are still able to support three adult teams and three junior teams. We also run the England & Wales Cricket Board All Stars programme for 5-8 year olds  to get children into cricket at an early age. 

To maximise participation, we strive to make cricket available to all age groups, playing standards and social groups. We seek to keep membership costs as low as we can in order to attract people from a broad spectrum of society. 

We'd normally be in the middle of our season now and the Ground & Pavilion would be a hive of activity. We've just started some small scale junior practice and are hopeful that we can play some adult and junior cricket in the second half of the Summer.

Community Involvement

The Club pavilion is a social hub for the local community. The bar & patio, looking out over the cricket field, are a lovely setting to enjoy a drink and a chat with friends while junior practice sessions or adult matches are in progress. 

We have made our facilities available to the Worcestershire Cricket Board to host district and county fixtures for junior boys and girls teams and our facilities are well used for non cricket activities by people in and around the Village. Before the pandemic, The Club was hired out for regular weekly yoga classes and has also hosted an after school club and a variety of family parties.

We're missing all this engagement at present due to the impact of Covid-19. We would normally host a Village Social night on the last day of the school summer term, an event usually attended by in excess of 500 people to enjoy BBQ food, drinks and a variety of games. We look forward to bringing people together again as soon as we can.

If you can support us in any of the ways suggested, it would be greatly appreciated. Don't forget to say YES to Gift Aid if your donation is eligible as this will boost our total further. 

This project successfully funded on 14th September 2020