Brentford FC

Brentford FC

Brentford FC Community Sports Trust

With community work spanning three decades, Brentford FC Community Sports Trust has established itself as a pioneering organisation for the local community. It uses the power of sport to educate, motivate and inspire people from all walks of life.

The Vision:

To use sport to engage, inspire and empower people in West London to achieve their life goals.

The Work:

The community programmes tackle diverse social issues, including inclusion, community cohesion, deprivation, physical activity, education and health.

Since 2014, we have delivered and engaged with:

• Over 29,000 sports and community sessions
• Education and physical activity in over 100 schools
• Over 8,500 girls involved
• More than 1,000,000 session hours
• Over 500 adults and children with disabilities

In 2017, Community Sports Trust has developed a Theory of Change (ToC) in consultation with key partners, to consider and respond to the need of the local community. The problem identified was ‘lack of engaging sports and physical activity-based solutions to social issues in West London’. This resulted in the development of a new three-year strategy, of which Health was the main identified area. The partners fed back that they felt the strongest area that we could make a positive change was in health.

The response of the Trust has been to create targeted programmes to help people or groups that face several challenges, such as disability groups, young carers, young offenders and working with the governments troubled families’ agenda.

The Trust and the UN Sustainable Development Goals:

Brentford FC Community Sports Trust has recently aligned the current business plan with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As a pioneering community sports charity, the Trust perceive the SDG’s as a priority to be implemented at a local and national level to:

• Increase exposure of the positive developments of all Trust’s areas of work;
• Demonstrate local and national responsibility, development and sustainability in line with SDG’s;
• Build key partnerships with concurring partners, helping to achieve the ‘Playing the Long Game’ objectives;
• Establish and expand the current work delivered.

Awards and Partnerships:

The Trust has won the ‘Football League Community Club of the Year’ award four times, including other awards as the Pro-Active West London Best Partnership Award and GlaxoSmithKline Local Health Awards.

The development of partnerships enables it to establish and sustain key community programmes. The Brentford FC Community Sports Trust continuously aims to learn and share community development best practices.