Spartans Community Foundation (SCF) is redefining community engagement by creating positive social impact

Spartans Community Foundation (SCF) is redefining community engagement by creating positive social impact

SCF aims to help people in North Edinburgh overcome challenges and barriers to fulfilling their potential by delivering services that improve social, emotional, and physical well-being, as well as boosting educational attainment and access to positive destinations.

The community foundation delivers youth work and education services from its existing Youth Work Space, which has become inadequate and inefficient. The current space, made from 6 recycled portacabins, lacks the functional capacity required for quality education and youth work. With rising demand for SCF’s services, especially post-Covid, maintaining the temporary portacabins is neither financially nor environmentally sustainable.

The new Education & Youth Work Space, co-designed with input from young people, promises an optimal environment for service delivery. It secures the present and future provision of SCF’s services, contributing to improved social, emotional, health, and educational outcomes for North Edinburgh’s young people. It also fosters a sense of belonging, giving young people a facility they can take pride in and underscores their value in the local community.

Find out more about the good cause of Spartans Community Foundation through this link.

Spartans stay rooted in the community ahead of Hearts cup tie

The Spartans “Ultras North” are producing a large display – known as a tifo – for the televised tie against the Tynecastle side. It will be latest project for the group, which was formed out of the youth work carried out by the Spartans Community Foundation.

The youngsters formed the group after attending the youth work centre at Spartans, which carries out a variety of work in the North Edinburgh community including youth clubs, alternative schooling, health and wellbeing initiatives, and breakfast and tea clubs where local youngsters can get a warm meal after school or on weekends.

“They’re a youth group that wanted to show their support for Spartans Football Club at the matches and do a bit more with tifos, displays and banners. Some of these young people have been involved with Spartans Community Foundation since they were three-years-old, in nursery. We work in the local primary schools and we’ve built a relationship with some of them there. They are involved in various clubs, some of them come to get their tea here and a lot of them come to breakfast club on a Saturday morning – so on a match day they could be here at Ainslie Park from 9am all the way until the game finishes after 6pm. It is a long day but it is good because we know they are safe here, we are able to engage with them and they are happy because they get something to eat and they can also cheer on Spartans.”

Kenny Cameron, Youth work manager

The ultras have also helped bring the community foundation and the football club even closer together, with the Spartans players engaging with young people on matchdays.