Girls’ football club has 20,000 reasons to celebrate
A GIRLS’ football club in Port Talbot has scooped £20,000 as part of a leading housebuilder’s successful charity campaign supporting under-18s across the UK.
Afan Lido FC Ladies & Girls won one of the top prizes in the Persimmon Homes Building Futures campaign, which encouraged applications in three categories – education & arts, health, and sports.
The club, which is planning to boost girls’ football in the area by installing a new artificial pitch, came third in the sports category.
Phil Davies, spokesman for the club, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to win this prize from Persimmon Homes. It’s a gamechanger for us.
“We want to give girls and women the chance to play football and to be part of a team. Not only that, the new artificial pitch will be a tremendous boost for the whole community, who will also be able to hire it for their own activities, providing an important income stream for the club. This donation puts us well on our way to providing the facility.”
Persimmon Homes has handed out more than £1 million in cash prizes to organisations across England, Scotland and Wales as part of the campaign. The first, second and third prize winners in each category were decided by a public vote, with nearly 400,000 votes cast.
The housebuilder congratulated 96 organisations for getting to the final stage of its Building Futures competition.
Three finalists were each awarded the top prize of £100,000, three the second prize of £50,000 and three the third prize of £20,000. The remaining finalists were handed £5,000 each.
The winners were announced during a virtual event, presented by Dame Katherine Grainger DBE, chair of UK Sport, alongside Persimmon Homes CEO Dean Finch.
FABRIC Foundation and Rhos Primary School also represented Persimmon Homes West Wales in the final for the health and sport categories and were each awarded £5,000.
Andy Edwards, managing director of Persimmon Homes West Wales, said: “We have been overwhelmed by both the response to the competition, and the hard work and dedication of those in all the groups.”