Refilwe 2015

Refilwe would like to say a huge thank you to Kitaid for donating football kit to their football team. Refilwe is a community development initiative based in Lanseria, Johannesburg. Refilwe's mission is to help children and adults to become sustainable: spiritually, mentally and physically, and to break the cycle of poverty in all these areas so that they can develop into contributing members of their community and society. Founded in 1991, initially as a health care clinic, Refilwe have since developed a strong focus on child care, community development and skills upliftment through education and mentorship. All individuals at Refilwe are encouraged to improve themselves, ensuring a better future for themselves and their families.

Refilwe is next to an informal settlement called Joe Slovo and in the past couple of years the relationship between Refilwe and Joe Slovo has strengthened considerably. Refilwe employs people from Joe Slovo, they provide after care and holiday tutoring programs for the children, every Saturday the children come to Kids Club and are given a hot lunch, there is a skills upliftment program in horticulture, sewing, catering and carpentry and Refilwe encourage a hand up rather than a hand out through a recycling exchange project.

 

The relationship has been strengthened through the Refilwe football team combining with the Joe Slovo football team that now trains weekly and takes part in local Sunday league. The kit that Kitaid provided replaces a kit that is old and mostly lost. Calday Grange Grammar School visits Refilwe every year and has done for ten years with a group of sixth formers and a major part of the visit is the annual Refilwe vs Calday football match. Calday won the match every year from 2010 to 2014. The Refilwe/Joe Slovo team had no idea we were bringing them a new kit and were incredibly excited and grateful to receive it. The coach Etu, pictured with the old Refilwe FC shirt, has learnt from previous experience and will keep the kit himself and at every training session or match will hand it out and get it back at the end in order to make it last longer and keep it in good condition.

Refilwe/Joe Slovo FC played the 2015 match in their new kit and having trained long and hard for a match they get very excited about, even creating a new trophy for the occasion, won the match convincingly with a score of 3:1.

Both Calday and Refilwe would like to thank Kitaid for their support and the donation of the kit. The whole team was extremely happy to have received such a generous donation and will enjoy the kit for a long time to come.

 

 

 

The KitAid annual review 2014/15

The KitAid annual review 2014/2015 is now here, check out all the great stuff we have been doing over the past 12 months.

Click on the following link to access the review.

http://kitaid.net/reports-resources/annual-reviews 

Marathon Premiership drive

Good luck to Ashley and Rob who will be attempting to visit all 20 current Premier league grounds in 24 hours this weekend.  They will be setting off from the Liberty stadium in Swansea on Saturday at 6pm and will be finishing at Leicester City on Sunday at 6pm.  They will then be driving down to Vicarage Road in Watford for a welcome by the KitAid team at 7:30pm. 

If they don't meet the target they will be having their legs shaved.  So far they have raised over £1000 which will be ring fenced towards KitAid projects in Lesotho and Malawi.

 

Malawi Hospital

We recently received a request from Simon Graham, a registrar at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool, for some kit.  We spoke and met up with Simon and became inspired by his work and the fact that he wanted shirts to take out to a hospital in Malawi to give to the children once they had undergone surgery. 

Our slogan of “It’s more than just a shirt” could not be closer to the truth and Simon has sent through some great photos of the children recuperating in their new Liverpool/Everton shirts.

A truly inspiring story, well done and thank you Simon

 

BBC Three Counties Radio

Derrick Williams was recently on BBC Three Counties Radio promoting the brilliant work KitAid do, a massive thank you to Nesta McGregor for having Derrick on the show!

 

If you would like to listen to the interview please see the link below.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02l8045#auto

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Derrick Williams met Derrick Williams

Derrick Williams attended Ashton gate recently to take in the Bristol City v Fleetwood Town game.  The reason behind Derrick's visit was the brilliant work Bristol Sport had done in collecting 600 plus shirts since the start of the season.

A presentation was made to Derrick by his very own namesake Bristol City defender Derrick Williams.  It's great to be involved with a new club and everyone at KitAid wishes Bristol City all the best with the rest of the season and there push for promotion to the Championship.

Merry Christmas

2014 was another record breaking year as we packed 1,201 boxes and sent out 42,035 items of kit

We passed the quarter of a million milestone and have now sent out 262,035 items of kit since 1998

We made 4 small grants of £1,000 each for project work in Uganda and Lesotho

We sponsored the fantastic Ballysillan (Belfast) footy camp project once again.

We partnered with Airdrieonians Supporters Club Trust for a novel project which collected 4k items of kit.

We continued to receive kit from Barry Lenton at Marine FC who has now collected 11k+ items.

We strengthened our charity partnerships with Hertfordshire FA, Evo-stik Northern Premier league and the Spartan South Midland League

We continued to receive support from University of Herts and Middlesex University.

We received kit from many professional, semi professional and grass roots teams from all over the UK.

We increased the number of Ambassador Clubs to 7 (adding Stegota FC and Airdrieonians FC) and set up a new club twinning partnership.

We would like to thank our Patron, Graham Taylor OBE and all of our volunteers who have helped to make 2014 another record breaking year.