Tomorrow, Watford Football Club begin their 2025/26 EFL Championship campaign away at Charlton Athletic. But before all focus turns to taking on the opponents on the pitch, here’s a look at how Watford FC’s Community Sports and Education Trust has tackled societal challenges away from packed stadiums and the lights, camera, action of modern-day football.
In its latest Social Impact Report, the Trust has announced a social value figure of £22,700,960. The impressive social value figure has been independently reached as part of the EFL’s Measuring the Impact of Clubs in the Community Report. They commissioned Substance – a leading research and technology agency – to use participation and outcome data to estimate the value of the community projects and interventions each Club within the EFL network is providing.
This annual document recaps a year of community engagement, highlighting the positive impact they have had, tackling societal challenges, and delivering upon their ‘one goal – healthier, happier, stronger communities’. The Trust deliver such an array of projects, it can be hard to focus in on just one achievement, below is a listed few:
- The Trust’s health programmes have been described as ‘an essential lifeline for people living with dementia’, whilst another project has ‘pretty much given me my life back’.
- In their football projects, delivered to a range of ages, there has been successes such as players transitioning into professional academies, American scholarships, or gaining a Distinction, Distinction, Merit (DDM) or higher.
- Whereas the inclusion work of the Trust has shown that 92% of participants strongly agree or agree that they are feeling more positive about their future after attending. Whilst an inclusion project in secondary schools’ programme showed a 48% increase in the number of attending pupils believing they had good attendance at school.The community work of the Trust is about the people. People like Darius, Sophia, and Martin below:
- Darius
Through our mental health and wellbeing projects, Empower and Youth Link, Darius gained confidence in expressing his emotions, inspiring peers to open up. “The Trust has helped me to develop and use new skills, helped me believe in myself, and gave me support every time I was in need!”. - Sophia
- “I’ve always loved football, but before joining the Premier League Primary Stars programme, I didn’t have many chances to play, especially as a girl. I was often left out of team selections with the boys, which was tough. Thanks to the Trust, I had the courage to try out for the Watford PDC and made it to the next round. Knowing [the Trust coach} would be there to support me gave me the confidence to keep going. I was so excited to share my success afterwards!”
- Martin
Thanks to our Shape Up programme, Martin lost an impressive 21.55% of his body weight, dropping from 149.4kg to 117.2kg, with his BMI falling from 49.3 to 38.7. Martin’s weight loss has had significant health benefits, including a reduction in blood pressure, a lower risk of diabetes, and an overall improvement in his mood.You can view the full Social Impact Report by clicking HERE.