Spaces For Sports In Soccer Aid Push

Barclays Spaces for Sports is organising a fundraising event at the White Hart Lane Community Sports Centre in Tottenham to support for this year’s ‘Soccer Aid’, the celebrity football match that raises money for UNICEF, the world’s leading children’s organisation.

In the run up to the main Soccer Aid event on June 6th, the nation is being challenged to ‘Keep it Up for Soccer Aid’ ,which involves people doing as many sponsored ‘keepy-uppys’ or headers as they can to raise money for UNICEF’s work to support vulnerable children across the globe.

The White Hart Lane Community Sports Centre is one of five flagship Barclays Spaces for Sports sites taking part in a mass keepy-uppy event, with sites in Portsmouth, Sunderland, Manchester and Derby also involved.

Around 60 young people from Lea Valley Primary School and Woodside High School will be taking part in the challenge at Tottenham, with more than 300 in total across all five venues.

Passing on tips and setting them on their way will be leading professional football freestyler Billy Wingrove, who works extensively in Tottenham Hotspur’s local community.

Joining Billy are Ben Hart and Alex Palmer, both 17 and recently given six month contracts with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, after winning a freestyle competition in Epping Forest as part of a programme delivered by the Foundation in partnership with Epping Forest Sports Development.

The artificial grass pitch and resurfaced tennis courts at White Hart Lane Community Sports Centre were opened in 2005 following £600,000 funding from Barclays and the Football Foundation.

Barclays Spaces for Sports is a community sport programme which has created 200 sustainable sports sites across the UK in partnership with the Football Foundation, as well as sites and projects in South Africa, Zambia, the United States and Spain. More will follow in other territories around the world where Barclays operates, including China.

Barclays also joined forces with UNICEF to launch ‘Building young futures’ in 2008. The three-year programme aims to empower thousands of young people across the world by providing them with the support and skills they need to achieve a brighter economic future for themselves and their communities.

If you would like to find out more about Soccer Aid, including how you can be part of ‘Keep it Up for Soccer Aid’ go to www.socceraid.org.uk