Our original name was Mandalay Wellbeing CIC changing to Football Against Dementia CIC in April 2022 following the success of this project. Our goal is still the same…to help people. This is an overview of some of our achievements.
Football Against Dementia History Timeline
We are very grateful to East of England COOP and Eastern Daily Press for producing this video which highlights some of the work we did during Covid.
As a volunteer led organisation we were delighted when Simone Taylor and Dr. Flindall launched Feminine Friday a female only employment and support group and Living With Endometriosis another support group. Both groups ran for 2 years.
After the game we continued distributing food and essentials to people in need. More tents etc. collected from the Sundown festival were distributed to local support groups, people in emergency situations and supporting local councils. We continued helping people into employment and made links with businesses to help with our aims.
As 2021 came to a close we once again embarked on the Christmas Stocking Campaign. We were still in the pandemic but with another 3000 stockings donated and a real network of ‘Elves’ we set the sleigh loose again…Over 2000 stockings and around 8000 larger items were distributed. The Campaign had now turned into a 6 month project.
Football Against Dementia – We received a donation of a football kit from Dr. Sheldon of East Norfolk Medical Practice. I saw Chris Suttons BBC video about his late Father, Mike Suttons journey with dementia and it struck a chord as my Mum has been living with dementia for 9 years and I decided to try to raise funds to buy funds for a memorial bench for former ‘Bloater’ Mr. Sutton. Working with our great friends at Great Yarmouth Town Football Club and the NHS we organised a football game at GYTFC to recognise our NHS heroes and for the memory of Mr. Sutton. The game was in a break in the middle of the pandemic. And over 1000 people came along with a host of former footballing legends. The day was extremely well received and we decided to make Football Against Dementia one of our ongoing projects with the goal of helping anyone, not just footballers, affected by dementia.
2022 was a pivotal year for us, we had been unsuccessful in securing any funding which would have helped us continue our services. So it was clear we had to take some radical steps. We continued as normal collecting, sorting and distributing essentials and supporting councils and statutory services.
We had to face the inevitable, we could not afford to stay where we were without funding and had to cut our cloth to fit. We moved to a smaller location. But carried on helping people and supporting statutory services in our community.
Immediately after and during the move to our new premises the Ukrainian Crisis began. We had lots of connections which we decided to utilise and were able to help fill and distribute 3 Articulated lorries of aid to the Ukrainian borders within 3 weeks. Our friends at Rapid Relief Team, Paul Sanford, Thorold’s Transport, Callum Lewis, Carl Crysell and literally hundreds of other people and businesses. Add Special thanks to…our friends…
