City's F.I.C. Get £100,000+ Grant

Last updated : 13 January 2009 By Covsupport News Service
Coventry City's Football In The Community department has been awarded a Football Foundation grant of £109,138.

The money is towards the provision of disabled football in Coventry. This will include employing coach Paul Reynolds for 30 hours of coaching sessions in schools a week and the cheque will be presented by City Director Gary Hoffman before City's game with Blackpool on Saturday.

Sky Blues in the Community is a not-for-profit organisation and has seven full-time staff members. It currently runs 40 after-school clubs a week, dealing with 1,000 children across Coventry and Warwickshire, curriculum coaching in 13 schools with over 650 children.

It also runs holiday courses at around 60 venues, which more than 2,500 children attended in 2008. In addition, it hosts a successful Saturday morning club, covering children in Reception to Year 7, which more than 100 children go to every week

The Department run by David Busst has also been awarded charitable status and a Bronze Award from the Football League Trust.

"Achieving charitable status is a significant achievement for us because it means, among other things, that we can access new types of funding and hopefully provide more activities for people in the local community," said Busst to the club website.

"We've already got a thriving list of activities running throughout the year, for children of all ages, such as soccer schools and now we can go from strength to strength.

"We're not just about football - we are trained to provide curriculum multi skill sessions in other sports such as tag-rugby, athletics, kwik cricket, uni-hock and basketball.

"The successful funding application to the Football Foundation means we have also been able to recently appoint a disability officer, Paul Reynolds, who will go into special needs schools and deliver over 30 hours of coaching sessions per week in special schools for the next three years.

"It's always been important for the football club to give something back and hopefully this achievement will allow our team to continue to do just that."