KitAid supports JUST ACT Football Academy and community
- Jane Smith
- May 9, 2021
- 3 min read
A busy week with a satisfactory conclusion. Saturday September 14th, I was able to go to KitAid, a long journey, approximately 140 mile south, to Hatfield in Hertfordshire to collect a variety of football kit. I had made my request a few months ago.
KitAid is a charity that recycles your once loved football kit and distributes to underprivileged children and adults
The last collection I made was almost three years ago. This time I was given almost a cubic metre of boxes, contents unknown. The long journey back entailed many diversions along various roads because of accidents but all were finally unloaded on the Sunday morning once I had help.
I was delighted to discover new and used football boots, and a quantity of wonderful lightweight Fulham Football Club training jackets, ranging from small to 3XL.
There was a mixture of brand new and used shorts, short and long sleeved football shirts, and sleeveless tops and cotton T shirts.
All the new boots were packed with toe protectors so I spent some time removing these and every boot has either a shirt or shorts pushed inside to save on packing.
I am hoping to use these paper mâché toe protectors in some crafty way, perhaps decoupage them with football club colours to raise funds. I will keep you posted!!!
Three days of repacking, after much pushing and cramming in I was able to reduce the boxes down to under half a cubic metre and empty these boxes thus reducing shipping costs by almost a half.
My next problem was how to ship it and here Kevin Sanders came in to play. Shipping regularly to The Gambia through GBay, on Saturday 21st I was able to load the car and take it all to him locally. It coincided with him having to travel to Coventry with his own items later that day but it all leaves this Wednesday 25th September.
The timing all round could not have been better!
Kevin also collects unused sports kit from UWE, West of England University and he had a quantity of brand new shorts, girls' skorts (shorts with skirt), jackets, and T shirts and generously donated two sackfuls to JUST ACT. Thank you Kevin.
Now I finally have a clean floor in two rooms and the knowledge that JUST ACT will be receiving valuable kit and I am sure their Sports Committee will see that excess is distributed fairly in the community.
BUT....
Is this the end of KitAid?
It is however, with great sadness, that I learnt that this may be the last collection to be made. On writing to thank them I was told that they have now lost their storage facilities and can no longer accept donations.
These are often from Premier Football Club as unsold items go out of season. It is of outstanding quality. This along with used kit from many sources has provided 621,633 items of kit since 1998 and ever increasing.
They are appealing for knowledge of any secure, accessible and reasonably priced storage units in Watford or Hemel Hempstead. If anyone has any knowledge of such, please contact them to enable this amazing charity to continue. Kitaidcharity@gmail.com It also saves on great wastage of unused kit.
I know members of JUST ACT Football Academy would like to thank both KitAid and UWE, through Kevin Sanders and Kevin himself,
for their great generosity.
We look forward to photos of distribution, perhaps in November.
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