On 24 November, Charlton Athletic Community Trust (CACT) published its Annual Report for 2020-2021, celebrating CACT’s achievements over the past year.
This year’s Annual Report shows CACT worked with over 20,000 people across its seven strands of work in 2020-2021 and committed over £5.3 million of expenditure on charitable activities.
During this period, many people were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. CACT are proud to have actioned 16,570 referrals through The Royal Greenwich Community Hub during this time by providing an emergency service such as food and prescription delivery. The Community Hub received 248,000 calls from the local community and offered additional support to vulnerable people throughout the pandemic.
Following Marcus Rashford’s food poverty campaign which highlighted the need for free school meals to be provided for those who needed them during the COVID-19 lockdowns, CACT worked with Royal Borough of Greenwich and London Borough of Bexley to deliver holiday camps during the Easter and Summer holidays. Over 850 young people eligible for free school meals benefitted from the camps which gave them a chance to get involved in active learning, creative arts and physical activities, whilst also supplying them with a healthy breakfast and a hot meal every day.
CACT offers 1-1 and group mentoring sessions to young people who are at-risk of becoming involved in crime as part of our Early Help and Prevention strand. Although in-person sessions were put on hold, CACT still delivered over 5400 hours of mentoring to 400 young people through phone consultations and, lockdown-permitting, in-person sessions in 2020-2021.
Football and Sports Development programmes engaged young people online while lockdown restrictions were in place, and our adapted summer and autumn football holiday courses still attracted over 3000 children across Greenwich, Bexley, and Kent to attend.
1570 young people participated in the activities run by CACT’s youth service, Young Greenwich, across the four youth hub locations. CACT also offers volunteering opportunities for young people through Young Greenwich and NCS. Over the past year, young people volunteered for 1700 hours across the Young Greenwich provision, whilst over 7000 hours of Social Action through the NCS programme was completed across London and Kent.
Speaking in the Annual Report, CACT’s Chief Executive Jason Morgan said:
“This has been a unique and challenging year, impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, colleagues across CACT with support from several of our stakeholders, stepped up from the start to help the local community.
“Throughout the year, our staff worked tirelessly and adopted creative ways to support participants on a range of programmes and, while restrictions limited physical engagement; virtual interactions such as daily football challenges, exercise classes, quizzes, workshops and mentoring programmes took place.”
For more statistics, information about CACT’s work and success stories, click here to read CACT’s Annual Report in full.