CREATING CHANCES E-NEWSLETTER ISSUE 01

While last season was a great one on the pitch, we continued to make enormous strides off the field as well. This e-newsletter gives you a fully interactive opportunity to see more about the latest community work that the Premier League and its clubs have delivered. Creating Chances is the new brand for all of the work that the Premier League now delivers in the community, here in England and in many countries around the world. Creating Chances focuses on increasing participation in sport through four key areas: Education, Social Inclusion, Health and Equalities. At least 1.4m people took part in the many community-focused activities that clubs run to tackle these important issues. And this number is set to rise with new projects, such as those you can read about here, starting all the time.

Alongside delivering the many national projects that the Premier League operate, almost all club community departments are now registered charities or foundations, forging close links with a host of local partners and running a range of their own specific initiatives. These organisations have passed strict governance criteria and are externally regulated by the Football Foundation to ensure the highest possible standards are met. The financial support for this work has also never been greater. The newly created Premier League/Professional Footballers’ Association (PL/PFA) Community Fund has given Premier League community departments the chance to access a £12.9m fund to develop new projects or enhance existing ones. Over 50 innovative projects have benefited from the Fund since its launch in mid 2008, with more than 35,000 people already directly engaged.

This inaugural e-newsletter focuses on three specific elements to the work that took place last season:

• The start of the groundbreaking new initiative ‘Premier League Health’, a unique programme that is seeking to radically improve the health of male football fans;
• The announcement of Premier League 4 Sport, a major new project aimed at encouraging young people to play four different Olympic sports;
• Highlights from last season’s ‘Places for Players’, our unique initiative that has seen one hundred Premier League players take part in a range of very different tasks and events for charities and their own club community departments.

Richard Scudamore, Chief Executive