Boxing legend visits Stainforth Amateur Boxing Club
Posted on Thu 29 September 2011
Case Study: Stainforth Amateur Boxing Club, awarded £21,500
The volunteers at the Stainforth Amateur Boxing Club have been buoyed recently by the presence of boxing legend Smokin’ Joe Frazier at their official launch.
The gym is now working with 50 marginalised young people in the area thanks to a grant from the Fair Share Trust. The club’s founder Paul Thompson said that when his friend, local entrepreneur and boxing enthusiast Andy Booker, suggested that Smokin’ Joe open the new centre he jumped at the opportunity.
“Andy is good friends with Mike Tyson and through him Joe Frazier. He asked if I’d like Joe to come down and open the new centre and I was hardly going to turn that down was I?” said Paul. “All the kids were buzzing off the extra attention that we got with the local media and TV cameras there. They really enjoyed it, even if they did have to ask their parents who he was.”
The club currently works with around 30 youngsters aged 9-16 and around 20 aged 17 and above. Paul said: “With the support we have received this gym will be going for years now. The gym we had compared to what we have now is really something. You would have to see it yourself to appreciate the difference. It’s like we’ve gone from non-league to the Premier League with the facilities we can offer these youngsters now.”
To the founder, the initiative gives young people somewhere to go and something to do and say that they belong to. “We are a team down here and they are all becoming like a big family.”
“We owe it to the South Yorkshire Community Foundation for helping us to come as far as we have. We will always be grateful for that.” The South Yorkshire Community Foundation is a grant giving and support organisation that directs funding locally to the causes that need it most in our communities. Fair Share Trust has awarded almost £800,000 in Stainforth since 2003, after it had been identified as an area that hadn’t received its “fair share” of lottery funding.
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