Donna Morris, our Volunteer Development Manager, was giving a talk to staff from one of our major sponsors, and mentioned a little story from the Glasgow Families Project to give them an idea of the hardships that some of our families face.
We are currently working with a single-parent, Somalian family where there are six young people who have all managed to escape the dangers and lack of opportunity that is happening in Somalia right now.
Four of the children are very keen and talented athletes and were in need of kit. The three boys of the family eat, sleep and breathe football and it shows when they handle a ball as they are mind-blowingly good. As their Child Support Worker, I knew this was an area I had to focus on in the work that I carried out with the family. When I asked about what kit they already had, I found out that the boys shared a pair of football boots between the three of them. This didn’t seem right for boys that were so committed to football and keen to play whenever they could. I was advised that before they joined a team, the best thing I could do was to get them good kits, but thought this would take months to achieve due to the long process of fund applications involved.
Celebrating with the new kit!
When Donna mentioned this in her talk, one man put his hand up and asked, “How do I give money to get those boys some football boots?” Other people followed. The response was heart-warming and Donna received a very substantial amount of money there and then.
This was topped up with the very charitable donation of Donna’s husband’s tip jar that he has in his coffee van, along with raffle money raised in our Glasgow and Edinburgh offices by some beautifully decorated gingerbread houses that Donna made. By now there was enough to buy a running kit for one of the girls of the family too.
The children have all told me that they want to represent Scotland one day. Hopefully this little gesture will help them on their journey to sporting super stardom!