Nothing happens without the amazing support of our wonderful supporters..
Fendercare Marine donated our second 20 ft container earlier this year. Thanks to Elizabeth Skinner, Adam Goble and James Rogers from Fendercare for the support as they organised delivery to the East of England Co-op Distribution Centre in Ipswich and the Futurestars Kit Amnesty 2019 began.
The support from the East of England Co-op has been amazing, led by Roger Grosvenor we began collecting kit and sports equipment all over East Anglia in all of their stores. The collected kit was sorted into boxes and recorded in our packing list for shipping. Other sports organisations and companies began to organise collections too including Leiston Football Club, Ipswich High School, Ipswich Town, West Ham United, Norwich City, Arsenal, British Airways, Boots to Africa, Bishops Stortford, John Grose, Copleston School, Suffolk FA, Framlingham College, East Bergholt School, Kersey Freight, Inspire Suffolk – the list goes on…
East of England Co-op kindly stored all the donations along with the container and it was a full day’s work to pack everything up, we wanted to use every cm of space – and I think we achieved it! We would have struggled alone though and on packing day Titus and I had amazing help from a team of volunteers including Vickie Richardson, Jaime Smith, Ali & Sian Kerr, Warwick Dunnett and his boys, Will Allen, Angela Knox and many East of England Co-op Staff.
Once the container was loaded and we had listed every item of the kit it is time to organise the shipping. We had more excellent help from one of our Trustees Bryan King at Denholm Global Logistics who shipped the 20ft Container to Lomé Togo, and the shipping costs were all covered by Roger at the East of England Co-op so another huge thank you to the Co-op for their amazing support from start to finish.
After a two week sea journey, the container arrived on 25th October where OMA Togo arranged the clearance and delivery to the Lomé clubhouse on 8th November, where a fantastic team effort by project manager Raman Ibrahim, his coaches and players saw the container unloaded and sorted.
The donated kit will be be used by all age groups at the Futurestars Agoe academy, a large quantity will also be donated to the Cacavelli School in Lomé for the children to have new clothes and uniforms donated by UK schools, and a quantity will also be sent over to Ghana for the school children in the project in Tema.
The container will also be put to good use – as a work place / office for the coaches to prepare ther training sessions
Recycling at its best…
Simon Milton
