Players across Henfield Football Club’s youth teams helped score some smiles during the festive season with the hundreds of Christmas cards they made and wrote for elderly people in our local community.
The children, age between five to 14, really enjoyed making and writing around 530 cards as part of the club’s ‘Score Some Smiles’ campaign, which were distributed to around 230 local people. Many players spent lots of time writing cards that were tailored to the recipient’s particular interest, including football, or drawing lovely pictures on the cards. The club’s U8s team even hosted a card making evening for players. Players’ parents also supported the club’s appeal for donations to buy small gifts for the card recipients too.
The cards and gifts were delivered the week before Christmas by members of the club’s youth teams to recipients including residents at Red Oaks, Upper Mead and Terry’s Cross care homes, people living in sheltered accommodation, attendees of The Haven and clients of Henfield Home Checks.
Joe Penfold, co-chair of Henfield Football Club, said: “We were thrilled by the response from our youth players to our ‘Score Some Smiles’ campaign. It was wonderful to see so many players making and writing cards to help bring some festive cheer to elderly people in our village. We chose to write Christmas cards because often many elderly peoples’ friends and relatives, who they used to receive cards from, have passed away and they no longer get as many. We hope the cards made lots of people smile.”
Sam Witherden, HFC’s other co-chair, said: “HFC has have been part of Henfield since 1899 and scoring smiles from local people is as important to us as any match scoreline. The Club has exciting plans for 2022, including hopefully progressing our plans for a new clubhouse at our existing site at the Kings Field, the return of our brilliant youth tournament in May and a World Cup quiz at the Henfield Hall in November.”
Joe Penfold
