U10s football team donate £400 to Bognor food bank

To earn the money, which was donated alongside a considerable amount of food, the boys braved sea winds and cold air to walk from West Park to the Littlehampton Marina.

But that’s just one part of the money they raised. The team’s nine mile walk raised more than £2,175 all in all – the remainder of which will go towards equipment, facilities and training for the season to come.

All of that is great news, but for head coach Paul Law, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. The sponsored walk was much less a matter of making money and more about giving the young men on his team a sense of the value of hard work and community spirit.

"There are people this week who are going to have food in their bellies, people you might know, that wouldn’t otherwise. That’s a really powerful thing,” he told the boys after the presentation. “We did this is so you all know that if we all do a little bit, the world is a better place.”

For the food bank, caught between a mounting cost of living crisis and the annual winter squeeze, the donation could not have come at a better time. Manager Clare Ockwell said it will make a big difference: “It’s huge. Because we’re a community resource and it’s important that the community knows we’re here. We rely on them as much as they rely on us, so we need things like this so that people know where we are.”

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