Read: Using the power of football to drive social change

We spoke to Collette Roche about using the power of the world’s largest football club for social good and how they are supporting young people across Greater Manchester. 

Q. Tell us a little bit about the work of the Manchester United Foundation in the community? How do projects such as Street Reds support young people?

A. Manchester United Football Club is world famous and we’re proud of that global identity. But, at the same time, we’re still strongly rooted in our local community and Manchester United Foundation is an important part of that. It was founded in 2006 as the club’s charitable arm and since then has gone from strength to strength to become a really powerful force for good in areas of need across Greater Manchester.

The Foundation’s mission is to use football to engage and inspire young people to build better lives for themselves and to help unite their communities. We’ve got a dedicated staff which delivers a range of educational and sporting programmes. Last year, almost 19,000 young people took part, half of which were female.

Much of the Foundation’s work is delivered through its 30 partner schools where we have full time staff providing extra-curricular support. We also have community initiatives such as Street Reds, which offers free football sessions not just for fun, but also to develop leadership and coaching skills.

It’s really inspirational work and I can honestly say that serving as a trustee of the Foundation is one of the most rewarding parts of my role at Manchester United.  

Q. How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your outreach work?

A. The pandemic has made the Foundation’s work more important than ever because it has had a disproportionate impact on the most disadvantaged communities, and particularly on the young people within them. We’ve seen massive disruption to education and increases in economic hardship in many parts of Greater Manchester, including some of those closest to Old Trafford.

While the pandemic has disrupted the Foundation’s normal activities, we’ve adapted to help our communities through the crisis. We donated £10,000 to each of our partner schools to assist vulnerable families and partnered with FareShare, the food poverty charity, to produce and distribute over 85,000 meals for children who might otherwise have gone hungry during school holidays.

In total, the club and Foundation have provided over £5 million of support to community causes since the start of the pandemic. It’s been a massive joint effort with lots of club staff volunteering. For example, with our hospitality operations on hold during lockdown, we were able to redeploy our chefs to produce meals for FareShare in the Old Trafford kitchens. They came in every day at 5am without complaint. Some of our players also took part, including captain Harry Maguire who helped pack some of the 50,000 activity bags distributed by the Foundation to local schoolchildren.

Everyone involved has taken huge pride in the work, and it was certainly one of the most uplifting experiences I’ve had during my time at United because there was such a clear sense of purpose to help our local communities at a time of need.

Q. Describe what the power of football means to you and how the Manchester United Foundation uses this to reach those from disadvantaged backgrounds? 

A. Football is the most popular sport on the planet and Manchester United is one of the most popular teams in the game. That gives us a hugely powerful platform to inspire people and influence behaviour. Last season, we attracted 1.1 billion interactions from over 166 million social media connections. Naturally, most of those engagements are focused on football but we can also use our channels to promote important causes, such as our All Red All Equal campaign against racism and other forms of discrimination.

So, you can see that we have two main ways of making a positive social impact - through digital engagement on a global scale and through physical engagement through the Foundation at a local level. Both use the power of Manchester United to influence and inspire people. Having the ability to do that is a real privilege, but it also carries a responsibility to use it well – and that’s what we’re trying to do.   

Q. Do you think social impact is often overlooked in sport? What can be done to change that?

A. I think sport is waking up to its social responsibilities – and to the power that it has to make a difference. We’ve seen that most clearly in the past year from our own Marcus Rashford, whose phenomenal campaigning on food poverty was so successful he managed to change government policy. What an inspiration he has been on and off the pitch.

As a club, we’ll continue to use our platform to campaign globally on issues such as racism, and to use our Foundation to make a real-life impact locally. We’re also paying more attention to our environmental footprint, including steps to reduce energy usage and waste, especially single-use plastics. 

It all adds up to us becoming a more sustainable and socially responsible organisation. Fans will always care most about what happens on the pitch, but they also want to identify with their club’s values. This is going to spur more and more competition between clubs to be seen making a positive social impact – and that can only be a good thing.