About

Sporting Foundation (SF) is a leading, successful, innovative and dynamic organisation which inspires and transforms people’s lives through the power of sport and community engagement. It is one of the biggest community sports organisations in the UK. The total number of direct and indirect beneficiaries is estimated to be around 55,000 annually. Children, young people, adults, male and female and people from over 50 different ethnic backgrounds partake in its various activities.

History

Sporting Foundation (formerly Bangladesh Football Association (UK)) was set up in 1996 by young sports enthusiasts who wanted to achieve their dreams and transform their lives. It was then a co-ordinating body for grassroots community football in Tower Hamlets.

Present

Sporting Foundation is a registered charity and its objective is to improve the lives of young people in particular through sport and community engagement. It is both a frontline and umbrella organisation and represents forty adult and twenty four youth football teams from Tower Hamlets and neighbouring Boroughs and beyond. Sporting Foundation organises football leagues and tournaments for the community at local, regional and national level. It supports member teams with capacity building to enable them to develop and provide better services to their users.

Many of Sporting Foundation’s projects have developed because of necessity and are long running projects supporting the community. The users are mainly young people from deprived backgrounds and on the margins of society. By organising football leagues and tournaments, Sporting Foundation keeps many young people engaged, brings them out of isolation, offers them positive diversionary activities in their life, in-stills pride and confidence and supports them to become good citizens.

Sporting Foundation delivers other non-sports related projects for its participants, such as volunteering programme, mentoring, employment and training support, accredited and non-accredited courses, personal development, gang and knife crime project and women and girls exercise projects. Sporting Foundation employs sports to engage young people in particular and provides a holistic service through these other supplementary activities. The projects continue to increase and enhance year on year.

Our Themes;

• Sports
• Young People
• Education
• Employability
• Health & Wellbeing
• Community Cohesion

Stakeholders and Partnerships

Sporting Foundation is an organisation for everybody – “together we are stronger“. SF works with various partners and stakeholders. It takes part in strategic decision making with the Football Association (FA), London Football Association, London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) football partnership, parks and open spaces, third sector strategy and LAP development.

SF has been recognised for its work by LBTH as it won the third sector excellence award for improving sport and recreation in the borough. SF is a FA charter standard club and has achieved matrix and REACH quality standard.  It closely works with professional clubs in order to give pathway to professional contracts at the highest level. It works with both private and public sector organisations.

Hard to Reach Communities

Sporting Foundation engages hard to reach groups as part of its widening participation strategy.  Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) and others are all engaged with on a daily basis. Through its programmes, Sporting Foundation is breaking down barriers which the above groups in particular face.

You Say, We Hear

Engagement to SF means that it does the following as part of its quality assurance- continuously seeking feedback from its stakeholders to enhance its activities:

• Informing
• Listening
• Consulting
• Involving
• Collaborating
• Empowering