Bangor City FC in the community is delivered in conjunction with Vi-Ability, a social enterprise company. 

Vi-Ability’s founder is Kelly Davies, an ex-international football player with 36 caps for Wales who has also played for Arsenal and Liverpool Ladies. She is also the youngest woman to obtain an MBA in the Football Industries.

Vi-Ability and Kelly's link to Bangor City FC stretch out long before the partnership was created for the community programme.  Before joining Arsenal Kelly played for Bangor City FC Ladies from age 14 winning the Welsh Cup as part of a highly successful squad who also travelled to Europe to participate in the Women's UEFA Cup.

During her studies, the idea came to her for a social business that could tackle the issues of commercially unsustainable football clubs and youth disengagement in education and sport.

The Social Enterprise “Vi-Ability” was developed to:

• Help tackle the issues of financially unsustainable football clubs, economic inactivity and youth disengagement.
• Introducing individuals to the commercial management of football clubs.
• Teaching them how to design, plan and run activities that help raise money for the football club, and make a real difference to the community in which they are based.
• All of which help the individuals to develop employability and life skills.
•  The project would support the running of sporting organisations

Since its inception Vi-Ability has gone from strength to strength with a range of successes and awards to demonstrate this success:

• Vi-Ability is an award winning social enteprise winning Social Enterprise Start-Up of the year 2011
• Managing Director Kelly Davies named Social Enterprise Leader of the Year 2012
• Developing successful projects at Colwyn Bay FC; Bangor City FC; Vauxhall Motors FC; Conwy Borough FC; Port Talbot FC and many others
• Winning contracts to deliver education courses and supported employment contracts for European and National Government
• Delivering successful Overseas work placement in partnership with football clubs in Sweden, Italy and Spain
• Plus much, much more - see www.vi-ability.org for more details

 

On a day to day basis the scheme at Bangor is managed by Ethan Ray. A number of activities are undertaken involving the local community, to find out more about upcoming events and activities check out our Community Calendar. School children are an important element of the scheme and activities involving them have included:

 

• The Healthy Heart Project delivered in partnership with The British Heart Foundation which engages children and young people within sessions and activities that develop the knowledge and skills to live a healthy lifestyle.  This hugely successful project engaged with over 250 pupils in the Bangor area and used a 2 pronged approach of educational development and sporting engagement to improve the health and well-being of school pupils.

 

•  In partnership with Show Racism The Red Card Wales, Bangor City Community Sports has delivered 2 separate race awareness workshops.  One delivered as an anti-racism match-day where local children came to the Book People Stadium to be engaged within education sessions on race and race awareness, with a stadium tour, chance to meet 1st Team Manager Neville Powell, and then watch the BCFC V Airbus match.  The other delivered in partnership with local schools Ysgol Cae Top and Ysgol Rhiwlas which engaged the children in a range of education sessions to raise awareness of race, racism and the impact it has on sport and wider society.

 

          

 

The children meet Bangor City manager Nev Powell  during the workshop.

 

 

 

 

Further activities have included graffiti workshops, disability football, and environmental projects.

 

For further information please contact Ethan Ray:

 

email:   This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Telephone: 01248 355852 - 07878938099