St Johnstone Community Trust joins the Network

St Johnstone Community Trust joins the Network

EFDN is happy to announce the St Johnstone FC Community Trust as a new member. The Trust would like to share its Award-winning community programmes within the network and learn from other CSR projects and programmes of foundations across Europe.

The St Johnstone Community Trust, Saints in the Community, is the charity arm of Scottish Premiership side St Johnstone FC, and was incorporated as Scottish Charitable Organisation in 2016. The Award-winning Trust is a thriving, sustainable, community-focused organisation, providing positive life-enhancing experiences using sport, and football, in particular, to help people throughout Perth and Kinross achieve their goals.

The Trust operates across Perth & Kinross and engages with its community in a variety of projects from cradle to grave. Activities exist within five key themes; Playing, Teaching, Learning, Including and well-being. They work with a range of partners to identify needs and support the delivery of projects designed to support the local community.

In recent years, the Trust has been recognised on a national level –  winning the Scottish FA’s Best Professional Club in the Community award in 2020, and the Scottish FA East’s Best Para-Football Project award in 2021.

Saints in the Community delivers many projects. We highlight here two of them:

Football Memories

Football Memories is an award-winning national reminiscence programme. Through the use of player picture cards, team photos, videos and other memorabilia, the programme is aimed at supporting older adults to reminisce about footballing days gone by. Those living in isolation or with a condition such as dementia or recovering from a stroke are invited to take part in various sessions across Perth & Kinross.

To extend the programme into the home environment, the Trust designed their very own ‘Memory Lane’ activity book. Crosswords, anagrams, guess who pictures (and much more!) fill the pages which can be enjoyed from the comfort of their sofa.

ADHD+Sport

In partnership with the Perth & Kinross ADHD+ Support Group and Motorvate Therapies Ltd, and funded by The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust, the ADHD+Sport programme aims to overcome the challenges children and young people with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) have in accessing local community exercise activities due to their often ‘socially unacceptable’ behaviours. Whilst evidence shows exercise is an effective tool for people with ADHD in assisting in modulating their mood and actions, they often face barriers to participating with “mainstream” groups unable to cope due to the aforementioned behaviours.

Over the course of 12 months, participating children are supported to attend a timetable of different sporting activities each lasting 6-weeks. Activities have thus far included football, horse-riding, martial arts, dance, basketball, climbing, archery, and athletics.

As part of the ADHD+Sport programme, participating coaches and other sports coaches across the county are invited to attend the free ADHD Awareness training course to upskill leaders and help them to recognise, understand, and meet the needs of children with ADHD. By supporting coaches to change the way they approach and deliver their sports sessions, the programme hopes to improve the family experience across Perth & Kinross and decrease anxiety when enjoying activities out with the programme.

Participating children earn stickers as a record of their achievements throughout and the programme intends to have a positive impact on the individual’s home, school and social life too.

The St Johnstone Community Trust appreciate the opportunity to network with Foundations and Trusts across Europe to share good practice and learn more about CSR projects and programmes while showing some of the CSR programmes they deliver in their community.

Hubert Rovers, CEO of EFDN: ‘We’re very pleased to welcome the St Johnstone FC Community Trust to our network. They are the 11^th Scottish organisation to join EFDN which gives us the opportunity to also provide more support on a national level in partnership with the SPFL Trust. With its award-winning programmes the St Johnstone Community Trust has proven to make a great impact on its local community. We look forward to sharing good practices with each other and they will be a great value to our network.’