Hartlepool United Community Sports Foundation

Following recent negative press surrounding a racial incident at Hartlepool United FC, as the Community arm of the Club, we want to work hard to help promote the #LovePoolsHateRacism message. The grant would be used to enable us to send our staff into Primary Schools within the town to instill the importance of equality and diversity. This will be done in the form of assemblies and workshops. By reaching children at a young age we hope to show that discimination has no place in life – whether that be at school or on the football pitch or wider community.

Many of the children we will be working with will be football fans, and a number of them will have been in attendance at the game in September and affected by the incident. According to the most recent Census (2011), only 2.4% of the residents of Hartlepool classified themselves as non-white. If our children are growing up in an almost exclusively white environment, it is important for them to understand that there are people of all nationalities, ethnicities and religions in the UK and a diverse society should be celebrated.

We will also run a competition for the children to design posters which will be displayed around the ground at Hartlepool United FC.