The Lions’ Foundation – Celebrating a Year of Success!

04 January 2023

As we begin another new year in 2023, we would like to take a moment to celebrate our Foundation’s fantastic work across the cities of Manchester and Salford, as well as the Borough of Trafford, during 2022.

The Foundation set itself a challenging target in 2022 to engage with 850 brand new participants across a variety of projects, but after a year of outstanding success we are now proud to announce that we exceeded that target significantly and reached 1,729 engaged new participants. This represents the surpassing of our original target by a margin of around 103%!

This success was achieved via the following projects:-

• Swinton Lions England Talent Pathway Programme : 135 young people between the ages of 12 and 16 attended our monthly sessions and received Rugby League coaching of the highest professionalism.

• The introduction of 136 new male and female players to community RL in 2022.

• The introduced of 165 new players to the sport in Trafford through the RL Inspired 9s competition.

• 427 young people took part in our Jose Kenga Diversity and Inclusion project.

• 624 young people were supported through our East Manchester Anti-Hate Crime and Holiday Activity Fund projects.

• The introduction of 119 participants with a disability to a suitably specific targeted activity.

• 123 participants were engaged in our Swinton Tackle IT Workshops

The Lions’ Director of Development, Damian Ridpath, said, “I am delighted with these achievements. I hadn’t quite realised until the year just ended just what an impact we had made over the year in 2022. Our small team of dedicated staff have worked extremely hard across the year and I have been delighted not only with the numbers achieved, but also with the number of participants who have returned week after week. If we count the number of individual engagements rather than the number of individual participants, then our numbers have exceeded 10,000 visits to Lions projects during 2022.

“Moving forward into 2023 we are hoping to increase our impact for a third year running, which will complement the promotion of our Lions and Lionesses into their respective Championships, and the planned launch of our Wheelchair Team. With the impending IMG Criteria grading soon to be released and its associated ramifications, there is no doubt that we are increasingly demonstrating the importance and relevance of Swinton Lions to not only the sport of Rugby League, but also to our wider community right across Greater Manchester.

“I’m also proud to confirm that all of our projects to date have been delivered totally free of charge to all participants. But in order to maintain this philosophy of free delivery, the Foundation is always keen to attract sponsors and benefactors, so please contact me at [email protected] if you would like more information.