The team at the University’s Men’s Football Club have collected and donated at least 20 full carrier bags of food, which is expected to help feed 100 children in Sheffield.
The team felt it was really important to help these children and their families over this half-term and were inspired by professional footballer Marcus Rashford’s great work.
Club Captain, Toby Newton-Dunn, said to Forge Press last week: “We saw the stuff [Rashford] has been doing in the last couple of weeks and we thought it would be great for us to help the people of Sheffield.”
The club’s work started when Charity Sec, Fraser Harding, requested that members bring food donations to training. After the success of that stage, Harding and Newton-Dunn decided they would ask for donations on their socials, to be dropped off to them outside the Students’ Union.
The team then opted to take donations from students outside the SU, where they collected £45 worth of food.
Newton-Dunn told Forge Press that a lot of donations came from people who went to the shop for food after they had seen the team’s stall. He said: “A lot of people saw us outside the SU and decided to go to the shop and buy some food and donate. Two girls saw us, went to the shop and came back with two carrier bags full of food.”
The food collected by the club was taken to the Handsworth Inn, a Sheffield pub recognised by Rashford on Twitter for the work it is doing to feed the city’s children.
Newton-Dunn also revealed that behind the scenes communication had been made with SU Sports Officer Matt Graves and the rest of the Uni’s sports clubs to collect food donations that will help Sheffield’s most vulnerable.
Their scheme was set into action last Monday.
