Sports Fun 4 All is a charity which uses the power of sport to improve the lives of children and young people in South-East London. Tom Johnston visited the project to find out more - read his full article here and listen to the accompanying podcast here.
On a rainy Monday night in Catford, south-east London, Kieran Connolly and his coaches oversee a football session of around 25 teenagers. If you turned up on a Wednesday in Lewisham, or a Friday in Bromley, you’d find a similar scene. Go back a couple of years to Bellingham and it would be the same.
Kieran Connolly is not just any football coach. He is the founder and CEO of Sports Fun 4 All, a charity that provides free football sessions for young people across south London. The charity uses the power of sport to improve the physical and mental health of young people, whilst keeping them in a safe environment and teaching them key life skills.
After launching in 2016, they have delivered over 1500 hours of free coaching, and are currently running 17 weekly sessions at 13 venues in five London boroughs: Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark. The charity says it is now the biggest provider of free football in London.
And yet, despite having around 300 to 400 young people per week attend the sessions, Sports Fun 4 All receives very little government funding. When the project initially launched, they received money from Lewisham Council, enough to run for 12 weeks.
When the funding finished, the sessions were so popular that Kieran felt obliged to continue them. In November, I went down to their Catford session to see first hand the impact they have and to talk to Kieran about the journey he’s been on since then.
PASSIONATE
“Basically I had the decision to make, whether I carried it on or stopped it,” Kieran says, “and I didn’t really have any plans to carry it on, but the young people wanted to continue.”
“I’m very driven and very passionate about this. My whole thing is that I don’t want to stop any of our sessions. I take that so seriously. I don’t want to stop any of our sessions because of funding. If they stop because young people stop coming, that’s different.”
This drive is very evident when watching the session, as is the respect that Kieran commands from the kids. The reality is that the charity would not have had a future without his commitment and refusal to give up in the face of rejected funding applications.
“I’d say, like, 60, maybe 70% of my funding bids are unsuccessful”, he says. “Our level of investment that we’re receiving doesn’t match the work that we’re doing.”
“I would say some of those boroughs don’t even know what we’re doing.”
This is a stark admission when you consider that Lewisham Borough, where the charity conducts 10 of their 17 sessions, is the 8th highest local authority in England and Wales for the total number of violent offences committed by children. Trust for London estimates that up to a third of children in Lewisham live in poverty.
Read the full story at sportsgazette.co.uk and listen to the accompanying podcast. To find out more about Sports Fun 4 All, visit the website sportsfun4all.com
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