Locally owned and run. Engaged with and supporting our local community.
We pride ourselves on supporting our community and since our Club opened in 2017, thanks to our wonderful members and staff, we’ve raised over £30,000 for local charities. We engage with our community in three main ways:
- Directly supporting local charities financially.
- Helping local charities and community groups to raise funds themselves (donating prizes, etc.), especially (but not only) when fund-raising has a sports/health focus.
- Supporting local schools in squash/tennis/getting active (schools coming in to use our facilities, Bedford schools’ squash tournament, etc.)
Local Charity Fundraising
We ask our members to select two local charities each year, and these are the charities that we support via events and other fund-raising activities such as coffee mornings, quiz nights, sponsored exercise events and our annual charity Summer Ball. The selection process takes place in July-August each year and the selected charities are supported for 12 months. This year (2022-2023) the charities chosen by our members the Elisabeth Curtis Centre, Riding for the Disabled and the Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice in Moggerhanger.
The Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice in Moggerhanger provides expert care for life-limiting conditions. They help with everything from pain and symptom management to emotional and practical help. Their expert team offers many services to help families. Doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational and complementary therapists, nursing assistants and a family support team all work seamlessly together. They are experts in supporting people through the most difficult times of their lives.
The Elisabeth Curtis Centre, Riding for the Disabled has been based in Bromham since 1975 and provides therapeutic riding sessions for disabled and special needs participants. Mainly catering for young riders, the centre can offer new skills, fitness, confidence building, postural therapy and most importantly fun! The Centre has a growing waiting list of new participants and needs funding to be able to train new coaches to help them. In the coming year they hope to introduce carriage driving as a new activity to cater for those who can’t physically ride a horse.
Support for Charities and Community Groups
We regularly support local schools, charities and community groups by providing prizes for events, competitions and raffles that they may be running. We allocate a budget each year for this purpose, and it is allocated on a first come, first served basis. Generally to obtain support, groups have to be reasonably local to the Club.
Junior Engagement in Squash and Tennis
We have a mission to revitalise squash in Bedfordshire, help drive tennis participation in the town, and help young people to get active in this screen-obsessed age. With this in mind we have a participation programme where we work with local schools to get them into the Club and using our facilities. We also run and financially support a performance programme for our squash and tennis junior members to help drive excellence.
