This Saturday, Swindon Town FC and Newport County FC’s respective Mental Health Football Teams will be playing each other at half-time during the first-team match to showcase their abilities.
The fixture will also celebrate the partnership between Swindon Town FC Community Foundation and Holiday Inn Express Swindon City Centre and Embassy of Man, who will be the main sponsors of their disability and social inclusion programmes.
Holiday Inn Express Swindon City Centre and Embassy of Man have supported the Swindon Town Community Foundation in the past, purchasing the goodie-bags given to every child who attended their Special Educational Needs Festival, which took place in March at Croft Sports Centre. They also commissioned the production of over 100 footballs to be hand-made in Lusaka, Zambia which were then distributed to the youth football teams of Livingstone, Zambia by the Community Foundation.
Social Inclusion is a huge part of what the Community Foundation does, and this includes working with people with physical and mental disabilities, and people who live with mental-health challenges.
They’ve chosen to celebrate this partnership with the match against the team from Newport’s ‘We All Wear the Same Shirt’ programme, because the Foundation’s Mental Health team are a fantastic example of the power of football in promoting social inclusion.
Head of Foundation, Jon Holloway, said:
“We feel honoured and privileged to be able to call Holiday Inn Express Swindon City Centre and Embassy of Man the main sponsors of our disability and social inclusion programme.
"We know that the Foundation touches the lives of so many people through football and non-football based inclusion programmes, and this partnership will only offer us greater opportunity to grow, and benefit the lives of many more people in our community."