Target reached!
If we are successful in reaching our primary target, additional funds will be used t...
Linfield Ladies - New Year, New Goals For Girls!
Belfast, United Kingdom
Aim
A key priority at the club is to expose as many young girls as possible to football making it easy and fun for them to participate.
Who are we?
Linfield Ladies Youth Academy is a football club for girls aged 4 to 16, we currently have over 100 players and 25+ volunteers across 10 teams. We offer training and games on a weekly basis for all registered players as well as hold events a couple of times a year for teams to celebrate their achievements and to socialise and have fun. Players and coaches come from all over Northern Ireland to join our club and we welcome people from all communities and have a diverse range of nationalities and religions at our club.
Community impact
We annually host a cross community Summer Cup for local teams to take part in. It has been greatly successful and all the kids who participate enjoy. Our home ground Midgley Park is very close to the local hospital, which is a massive part of our community, especially over the last couple of years during the Covid pandemic. The club has raised over £5,000 through our Summer Cup to support the Tiny Life Charity and Royal Children's hospital as well as donate Easter Eggs and Selection boxes. Our club also offer our facilities to other local community groups to use on a regular basis, one of which being Emsoni, who are a local ethnic minority sports organisation. This gives them an affordable safe place to organise events.
Why support us?
We are focussed on providing current and future members with accessible and inclusive football. Our club feels it is important that young girls from all walks of life are given an opportunity to experience and participate in team sport as this positively impacts on their physical, social and emotional development.
To achieve this, we want to raise money to invest in coach education to ensure girls have access to some of the best coaching in the country to rival boys' teams. We want to ensure all players receive an education in the game with experienced coaches. Unfortunately, due to covid, football was on hold for a few years which saw our club struggle financially and suffer from a drop in members, particularly at the younger age ranges.
The New Year, New Goals for Girls project is about re-energising our club, coaches, volunteers, parents and most especially our young footballers. We want to increase provision and support for all age groups to encourage the expansion of girl’s football. In particular, in January 2023 we will run a brand-new programme of FREE taster sessions in our local community of South Belfast to encourage as many young girls as possible to participate in football.
How we’ll spend the money raised
To continue to expand our club with new members, we need to offer a high-quality experience with more of our coaches being given the opportunity to attain UEFA coaching licences, cover the rising costs of training facilities and invest in new equipment.
However, we also would like to be able to support players and coaches more holistically by offering additional expertise in areas such as mental health and nutrition. We believe as a football club we should be at the centre of our player and coach well-being on and off the pitch. We have a duty of care every day of the week to our volunteers and kids not just when they are at our training and games.
This is why we need your help and support. Please donate what you can to invest in the future of our club. Our target is £8,335. We need to raise £3,335 of this ourselves and Sport NI will kindly contribute £5,000 towards this.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!
4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!
Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
This project successfully funded on 28th June 2023