Mike Hughes goes behind the scenes of the Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation
Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation
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There is no doubting the passion at the Riverside.
For the thousands who pour into the place to adore and admonish at each home game, Boro is a huge part of their lives and the roll-call of legends who make the club what it is echoes around the ground... Aitor Karanka, Juninho, Jonathan Woodgate, Helena Pinder, Emmanuel Adomah...the list goes on.
Wait. Who? Pinder?
The name may not trip off the tongue as easily as Aitor’s, but Helena Pinder attacks, defends and draws up strategies at the stadium every day.
Around the back of the ground is the small doorway to the MFC Foundation offices where she leads her 24-strong team.
The foundation is an independent charity set up by Steve Gibson in 1996 to provide education and training for the community.
Every Premier League and Championship side has one, but Boro’s is as tight and focused a team as you will find, undergoing a fine-tuning and new brand in March last year.
So, as it heads for its 20th anniversary in 2016, what do they actually do under that stand facing the executive boxes?
“We use the inbuilt following and high profile of the club brand to engage with the community to provide opportunities for disadvantaged Teessiders and help them maximise their potential,” explained Helena.
That strategy makes an important point. This isn’t a handout.
It requires commitment on both sides – but the club will stretch way beyond pure sport to back someone who can make a difference if they are just given the guidance and training MFCF can provide.
Helena has been part of the set-up for seven years and has overseen that expansion of the club’s reach.
As well as the team you shout for every week, your football club now has three classrooms, 25 laptops, a Futsal programme, grass pitches and more classrooms at Eston, staff who all have a Post-Grad Certificate of Education, a Btech course at Middlesbrough College, a healthy-living bus out in the community... the list is impressive and difficult to match anywhere else in the country.
It has now worked with more than 20,000 young people around the region.
This is brand awareness at its finest. The realisation that a football club has such pulling power, that as well as taking its community of fans on a roller-coaster ride throughout the season, it can offer work, training and hope that can only exist because of the trust businesses and partners put in Boro.
In 2002 the club’s set-up became an enterprise academy offering packages for business and enterprise-related learning.
The work the foundation did after that was so innovative that now the 24 other academies that are run at other clubs around the country are based on the Riverside model.
“Social inclusion is also an area where we can have an effect,” said Helena.
“We are working with the Middlesbrough and Teesside Philanthropic Foundation and a year ago set up Middlesbrough Homeless Football Club which aims to improve the health and confidence of homeless people in the area.”
Residents from eight local hostels went head to head in the club’s first game and as chairman Andy Preston of the Philanthropic Foundation told the Gazette at the time: “The long-term goal is to raise life skills and life chances.”
Those chances are affected by environment and the MFCF has seen noticeable changes.
Its Premier League Kickz project has been used to help repair a divided Teesside community.
Middlesbrough Council flagged up concerns in Gresham about potential conflicts between different groups.
The Kickz programme is funded by the Premier League Charitable Fund, Sport England, Erimus Housing, Tees Valley Community Foundation and Lloyds TSB.
It has sent coaches into the area and young footballers are now focused on playing together and against each other in good-spirited games.
Crime figures are actually falling in areas where the foundation is working – one of the proudest goals of any organisation that works with its community.
“We will always want to expand, but it has to be a slow and organic process, with the support of local businesses to back up our aims,” said Helena.
She is certainly a woman as passionate about the foundation as she is about the club itself.
“I love what we do - and the sense of what we can achieve is really rewarding.”
The foundation is already in a premier league of its own - here’s hoping the club can join them in that status next season.
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