Examination of Witnesses (Questions 57-59)
THE FOOTBALL
FOUNDATION
27 JUNE 2006
Chairman: Can I welcome the Football
Foundation as our next witnesses and in particular the Chief Executive,
Paul Thorogood, and Clare Fitzgerald, who is the Senior Development
Manager.
Q57 Alan Keen: Thanks for all you do
for football. If an application comes in to you from, let us say,
again a combined counties club who would like a contribution towards
building a new stand, what would your attitude then be with regard
to women's football if an application came in?
Mr Thorogood: I will answer that
question in due course, but would it be helpful if I very shortly
explained exactly what the Football Foundation is and what we
do?
Q58 Chairman: If you could give a
very brief summary. I think most of us have a reasonable idea
of what the Football Foundation is.
Mr Thorogood: I think the key
point here is that we are the largest sports charity and there
is a unique partnership between the FA Premier League, the Football
Association, Sport England and the Government. Our job is to help
revitalise grassroots football and use football as a power for
good in terms of promoting health, communities, education and
social inclusion. Since our launch, the Foundation has supported
over 2,400 projects were more than £425 million. Specifically
for women's football, although we do not support projects specifically
for men and boys, we have supported 86 projects specifically for
women and girls at a total cost of £9.8 million since 2000.
As I said, since our launch, our support for the grassroots game
ranges from million pound grants for new facilities through to
providing new football strips for girls' and boys' football teams,
and as of today we have given over 100,000 brand new strips. I
just thought it would be useful to you for me to say that we are
an organisation that does not discriminate at all and that anything
we do is aimed at both women and girls and men and boys.
Q59 Alan Keen: I am sort of Chairman
of a combined county structure and if I came to you and said,
"We'd like a new stand. Can you give us some money for it?",
would you say to me, "Well, are women involved in your club?"
or would you just come down, have a look and say, "No, we
won't", but not mention women?
Mr Thorogood: Clare has a lot
of the detail, but just before I invite Clare to speak on the
detail of what happens, the Football Foundation makes sure that
in all the grants it gives and offers women's and girls' football
is specifically included in them. As to your question, Clare has
a lot of the detail on that.
Ms Fitzgerald: What would happen
when we are actually looking at the application, if it was for
a facility build, there are obviously a lot of technical areas
which would be addressed through the application process, but
the staff at the Foundation would very much look at the overall
programme that you are looking to deliver and what development
plan you have to engage with the community as a whole, and that
would include women and girls, and that development plan would
be an essential part of your application process. If it was not
robust enough and did not address some of the key issues, the
staff would work with that applicant to encourage them to look
down certain avenues and, if it was women and girls, for example,
they would make sure they were doing that before it got through
our processes. Then we monitor that as we go, so, even after an
award, it is then monitored to make sure it is meeting its development
plan that was agreed with the Foundation.
|
