Enterprise in the national curriculum is gathering momentum but too often pupils lack the basic tools, ideas or products to make learning meaningful - thanks to ‘Business in a Box’ that is about to change. 

Providing some basic tools, the seed of an idea and a business plan that can be populated and used as a road map, ’Business in a Box’ sets up pupils with a template for running their own business.  Their challenge then is to introduce the kick4change concept and our 4sport products to their cluster of primary schools, teachers, children and parents.

Hands-on business skills such as communication, sales, marketing, financial analysis, logistics management, cash handling, profit delivery, time planning and project management are all experienced in undertaking their challenge. In benefiting from a wholesale price, the secondary schools will also make a healthy profit that is theirs to keep.

We look forward to working with Bedale and witnessing firsthand the fruits of their labours. If the enthusiasm, energy and ideas from today are carried into the project, they can certainly expect to make a huge success of their first taste of enterprise.

Special thanks should go to both Dr Helen Thompson of Bedale School for sharing our vision and working with us, and Lynda Dixon of SSAT who set the scene for the day.

We are very pleased to announce a groundbreaking new partnership with North Yorkshire Sport, one of the 49 County Sports Partnerships (CSP’s) across the UK.

The agreement reflects a new approach to creating sustainable funds that can be used for incremental sports provision. We will work on joint marketing initiatives and have committed to donate £0.25 from the sale of every pair of boots purchased in North Yorkshire to the CSP.

In an additional initiative, we will be working with the CSP to communicate our ‘PledgeMySeat‘ global legacy campaign, introducing this to schools. This will act as vehicle for fundraising within schools, and allow children to be introduced to the concept of Global citizenship, using free to download materials.

The challenge is simple. We are aiming for every participating school to raise enough money to pledge at least one seat per classroom, with all surplus monies raised to be shared between the school, the Partnership Development Managers and North Yorkshire Sport.

It’s great to have a partner such as North Yorkshire Sport on board and we would welcome similar partnerships with other CSP’s.

One of our partners the Free Kicks Foundation are one of the charities and we are grateful that founder Steve arranged for our Ambassador Brandon to showcase his football freestyle skills. 0 v4 at halftime, Posh fans chanted ’sign him up’, ’sign him up’ throughout his faultless performance and were soon joined by the Cardiff fans who were equally as impressed with Brandon’s skills!

Brandon’s performance must have inspired the Posh players as they came out a different team in the 2nd half and fought back to draw 4v4!

The matchday programme featured a full page on our legacy campaign ’PledgeMySeat’, with two Posh players, Gabriel Zakuani and Tommy Rowe, pictured holding their placard indicating that they were lending their support.

To mark the occasion of today, we have committed to providing £2 from each seat pledge to the Free Kicks Foundation. Simply type in ‘Posh’ in the field when prompted and your money will be donated to a fantastic charity.

To view a video of Brandon at halftime, please visit http://www.youtube.com/kick4change

At the event in Birmingham, organised by the Council, 50 disadvantaged children were invited to an early Christmas party, including disco, lunch and a visit by Santa.

Amongst the gifts handed out were boots that we donated and Curtis later signed and presented to the excited kids. A great day was had by all.

Curtis later became the latest person to Pledge his Seat, ensuring a new pair of boots will be sent to an African child as part of our 2010 legacy campaign.

More details and a picture of Curtis pledging can be found by visiting www.pledgemyseat.org

The Termly Challenge is open to all Go4it schools in the UK and there are prizes for the winners in two categories. The aim of our Termly Challenge is to demonstrate a spirit of enterprise, innovation and creativity in raising money for using to pledge seats in the PledgeMySeat virtual stadium.

Submissions need to be in by 1st April, so start your challenge soon!

For more details visit Hti

Based on the venue for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we have created a virtual stadium and are selling virtual seats priced at £14.99. Every seat represents a new pair of boots that we will donate to our charity partners on the purchaser’s behalf.

All our charity partners are what we call ‘practitioners’, organisations who actually get their hands dirty and use sport as a building block of social change. Each uses sport, and particularly football as a way of engaging with children and educating them in issues such as HIV prevention, dealing with the stigma of carrying Aids as well as teaching basic life skills such as respect for others and self esteem.

To kickstart the campaign, we have pledged 500 seats (500 football boots).

As this is a global campaign focussed around social media, we want as many people as possible to share what we’re doing with friends, colleagues and associates and generally spreading our campaing far and wide. In return for this we will donate an additional 500 football boots if we reach 20,000 registered email address on the site before Xmas day 2009.

Pledge your seat for a chance to win a life changing trip to Africa.

Visit:

PledgeMySeat Website

Twitter Page

Facebook Page

Many thanks for your support and spread the word!

Nomiated as finalists in the Enterprise section, we competed with Alive and Kicking and Soul of Africa and ultimately finished second, behind Alive and Kicking. Our entry centred around our ‘Boot Library’ concept, allowing Townships in Africa to benefit from managing and using sports equipment. Our model is to work with a local community organisation that has the capacity and storage capability to house a library, and which is already running a football programme for children. By developing these partnerships we can tap into local knowledge, engage local people and access thousands of underpriveleged kids.

The event invited nominations in eleven categories and shortlisted finalists included The Didier Drogba Foundation, Michael Essien, Kick it Out, The Nwankwu Kanu Heart Foundation and The Craig Bellamy Foundation amongst many others.

There were some big names in attendance and it was a great chance to network with key decision makers such as Lord Triesman, FA Chairman, as well as 2009 award judges Marcel Desailly, Nancy Dell’Olio and Brian Oliver, Sports Editor of The Observer.

SCORE4africa is a social enterprise wholly owned by UK registered charity The African Foundation for Development (AFFORD). SCORE4africa believes football can help transform lives and recognise, reward and encourage those individuals, organisations, players, accademies and institutions using football as a tool to drive positive change in Africa.

Congratulations to Alive and Kicking and all last nights winners and finalists.

Thirsk Falcons Junior Football Club of the Teeside Junior Football Alliance are pictured proudly wearing new 4sport boots, courtesy of team sponsors Printing.com, Middlesborough.

The boys from the under 8 team will now wear the boots as part of their official strip, leading to a more visible club identity and feeling of inclusion. Explaining the motivation behind the boot purchase, Garry Ingoldsby, Director of Printing.com commented;

“Supporting social and environmental causes is at the heart of everything we do. We are always on the look-out for new and exciting community initiatives to support and kick4change hits all the right buttons. We are proud to support kick4change and Thirsk Falcons by sponsoring the purchase of boots and look forward to a successful future partnership.”

Club Chairman Colin Smith agreed;

“The club is firmly behind kick4change. We are keen to encourage young people from all backgrounds to join our club and develop the footballing talent for the future. With an organisation such as kick4change offering top quality football boots for such a low price and re-investing their profits into grass roots sporting clubs, this makes football available and accessible to all.”

You can follow the progress of the team by visiting www.thirskfalcons.org.uk

On Saturday we met with Steve Thorpe at Bramall Lane and handed over some boots that Sheffield United fan Kiera, pictured, proudly wore during her afternoon as the Blades mascot. We also handed over a pair of boots that Steve hopes to get players to sign and will auction off to raise further funds.

We look forward to working with Free Kicks Foundation on future events.

We have created a 2010 virtual stadium, based on the venue for the 2010 World Cup final and are encouraging fans, schools, clubs and businesses to buy virtual seats.

For every seat pledged we will send over a pair of new 4sport football boots to one of our charity partners, enabling them to use the boots to engage with children from townships all over Africa, educating them in issues such as HIV prevention, Aids awareness and life skills such as self esteem and respect.

Given the injustice of last Wednesday’s France versus Ireland result and the subsequent fury it has provoked, we have decided to help Irish fans put their own stamp on the World Cup and leave a lasting legacy. For every Irish fan who pledges a seat, we will print an Irish flag on the boots we send over, meaning that if the Irish fans and team won’t be in Africa in person, they will be there in spirit.

Fans of other nations who share the anger at the injustice of the Irish result can also throw their weight behind the cause. When pledging your seat, simply select Ireland as your country and we’ll print an Irish flag on those boots we send to Africa on your behalf.

Let’s together send out a load and clear message to the French and the footballing authorities: ‘They can prevent Ireland from participating in the 2010 tournament, but they can’t prevent us from playing our part in creating a lasting legacy’.

The www.PledgeMySeat.org site will be live on Friday 4th December to allow you to directly pledge your seat or find out more information about our campain.

 www.PledgeMySeat.org

Spread the word

Many thanks

The kick4change team