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EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
The Foundation is committed to providing equality of access to its facilities for all groups and individuals regardless of gender, age, race, or disability. The Foundation has supported girls football for a number of years with priority bookings given at Douglas Eyre Sports Centre, Peter May Sports Centre and London Marathon Playing Field, Redbridge. At London Marathon Playing Field, Greenwich the Foundation employs a part-time Girls Mini-Soccer Co-ordinator to implement an extensive range of coaching courses and competitive opportunities for girls. Through the establishment of local football partnership groups at Greenwich and Redbridge the Foundation is working with other football providers to encourage the development of girls football in London. All of the Foundation’s grounds provide mini-soccer and junior football pitches and its adult pitches are primarily given over to youth football on Sunday afternoons. The London Marathon Playing Field, Greenwich is a FA County Junior Football Centre with 12 mini-soccer pitches used by boys and girls leagues each weekend. Several of our grounds are also used by schools for their curricular and recreational activities. The charity has for many years hosted a successful mini-soccer festival for primary schools at Douglas Eyre Sports Centre run in partnership with Leyton Orient CSP. The Foundation also supports the development of youth cricket through the provision of pitches for schools and colts teams and Fairlop Oak Playing Field is the venue for the Under 11s Essex Midweek League. The Foundation has a strong working relationship with the London Sports Forum for Disabled People and makes its facilities available to disabled groups for tournaments, courses and squad training. Douglas Eyre Sports Centre and Fairlop Oak Playing Field are the home venues for two deaf teams and Peter May Sports Centre has hosted trials for learning disability squads. The London Marathon Playing Field, Greenwich regularly stages festivals for special schools in South East London. The Foundation puts special emphasis on working with black and minority ethnic groups and provides a home for a number of one team cricket clubs, the majority of whom are black or Asian. Through the support of the All Nations Football Festival the Foundation has actively encouraged ethnic minority groups to participate in affiliated football, thereby increasing access for these groups to its facilities. The Foundation recognises that these groups have historically been excluded from participating in sport. In order to remove some of the barriers to participation the Society has implemented an Anti-Racism Policy which will allow all users to participate in sport without the fear of racial harassment. The Foundation:
Through the implementation of this policy the Foundation will actively encourage all members of the local community to use its facilities to meet their sporting needs. To demonstrate its commitment to working with ethnic minority groups the Foundation has signed up to Sporting Equals' Racial Equality Charter for Sport and is working towards obtaining the standard's Preliminary Level. At the Football Association's development conference in November
2002 the Foundation won a national award for its pioneering work
with ethnic minorities through the All Nations Football Festival.
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