Article by Strip Amnesty
Further strip collections tonight at Aston Villa and Wolves
The generous fans of West Bromwich Albion football club have donated nearly one thousand replica shirts to be shipped to the townships in South Africa in time for the World Cup this summer.
The collections were held at the Hawthorns prior to the recent home games against Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United. A total of 525 shirts were collected from the Forest game, with another 446 collected from the Sheffield United game, making a total of 971 shirts donated by Baggies fans to help Strip Amnesty (www.stripamnesty.org) reach its target of 20,000 shirts to take to South Africa.
Further collections will be taking place this evening (February 10th 2010) at Aston Villa’s home game with Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers home game with Tottenham Hotspur.
The shirts that are collected will be cleaned, packaged and shipped to South Africa to distribute to some of the country’s most underprivileged children and adults in advance of the World Cup.
Strip Amnesty is an initiative that is being organised by members of Birmingham’s professional services sector. It aims to collect replica football shirts and take them out to the South African townships, to ensure that poverty does not exclude them from the World Cup that is happening in their country.
As well as West Brom, Villa and Wolves a host of other professional clubs are also on board with the initiative, including Birmingham City, Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Shrewsbury Town, Stoke City and Watford.
Further collections are already planned at the Wolves home game against Chelsea on February 20th, the Villa home game against Burnley on February 21st and the Shrewsbury home game against Darlington on 27th March.However, even if your team is not listed above you can still get involved. Supporters of any football team can donate an old strip that they may have outgrown. And clubs, schools and companies can also get involved to donate the shirt off their back – just like Baggies hero Scott Carson has done.
“West Brom fans have shown just how big-hearted they are, and we’re really appreciative of that generosity,” said Mark Triggs of Strip Amnesty. “However, I’m sure they’re not the only ones. So if any other clubs, or for that matter companies, organisations, schools or whoever, want to organise a collection we’d be really grateful.”
“We’re taking all the shirts out to the townships in South Africa where they will make a real difference,” Triggs continued.
If anyone is interested in donating a shirt, you can find out more information at the Strip Amnesty website – http://www.stripamnesty.org.
Even if you haven’t got a shirt to donate you can help with the administrative costs as the site will soon be adding a ‘Donate Now’ button on the site courtesy of Impulse Pay (www.impulsepay.com). This will allow anyone who wants to to make a donation through their mobile phone bill, using the Payforit service.
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Further strip collections tonight at Aston Villa and Wolves