This week marks the EFL's Week of Action for 2022. Every day this week we are going to be celebrating the different things we are doing here at Cheltenham Town to support our local community.
Today's theme is focused on participation and engagement and a lot of the work that is being undertaken by the Cheltenham Town Community Trust as a charity operating alongside the football club in the local area.
Premier League Primary Stars
The Primary Stars project is delivered by the Community Trust and is aimed at 5 to 11 year olds both indoors and outdoors.
It's a programme that consists of topics including PE and teamwork, to English and Maths and has been delivered by the Trust in recent years to children across Cheltenham.
The scheme uses the appeal of the Premier League and professional football clubs to inspire children to learn, be active and develop important life skills.
Premier League Kicks
Premier League Kicks uses a variety of sports to work with youngsters in the local community to build social skills, self-esteem and ambition.
It's aimed at helping young people to achieve their potential and improve their wellbeing to help build safer and more inclusive communities.
The programme here in Cheltenham has worked in various different areas to help strengthen local communities.
Holiday courses & after school clubs
The Community Trust continues to provide holiday courses for children aged 5 to 11 at different sites around Cheltenham.
These run during the school holidays and are hugely popular with fun football activities featuring alongside other sports. This also includes regular visits from first team players.
After school clubs operate at a number of different schools in the county.
Disability
The Community Trust continues to run a number of disability football teams who play in the highly successful Gloucestershire FA Ability Counts County League.
There are five different teams taking part in this season's competition with the disability team also training regularly too.
Internet training
A new recent addition to the Community Trust's participation in schools is the 'Fibre Fans' project.
With support from CityFibre, the project sees the Trust visit local schools to deliver internet training and IT skills to primary school children in years 5 and 6.
Sean Long is the ambassador for the project and in person teaching has already started at schools in Cheltenham.
'Re-active'
Thanks to National Lottery funding, the Community Trust has recently started a new project working with over 60s as part of the 'Re-active' project that aims to help participants improve their physical and mental wellbeing.
The Trust have been delivering the project by visiting care homes and independent living schemes operated by Cheltenham Borough Homes.
Player visits
Both as part of the Community Trust's activities, but also the football club's, first team players make regular appearances at clubs and events around the local area.
Whether it is to present awards, take part in a question and answer session or to drop in on a local project, the players have represented the club in the local area and got out to meet people in the town.
Lateral flow tests
At the start of 2022, the club teamed up with Panda Medical to provide free lateral flow testing kits for COVID-19 to the local community in Cheltenham.
Testing kits were available to collect from the Jonny-Rocks Stadium in what was believed to be the first of its kind when it comes to football clubs offering free test kits to local people.
Prostate United
In November 2021, staff and a director at the club helped to raise over £1,300 for Prostate Cancer UK as part of the Prostate United challenge to run either 10 kilometres or cycle 25 kilometres every day during the month of November.
It was all part of a bigger campaign: 'Prostate United' involving football clubs across the country where club staff and medical teams did their bit to raise important funds for a charity helping men with a cancer that one in eight in the UK will unfortunately suffer from.
Once again this season the club have also welcomed lots of charities to the Jonny-Rocks Stadium for matchdays, helping them to raise thousands of pounds to help local people, while the club's Goal of the Month award involves the winning player donating £100 to a charity of their choice - thanks to the generosity of sponsors Seymour John.
