Last season Cazoo have donated an incredible £1,000 per goal scored by Aston Villa in the Premier League and £2,000 per goal scored during the Cazoo Football Derby’s to the Aston Villa Foundation. A total of £57,000 was donated, supporting some fantastic community outreach projects in Birmingham.
One of the first initiatives supported by Cazoo’s Golden Goals fund was providing a DJ kit to Aston Villa Foundation’s Premier League Kicks department, allowing young aspiring musicians the chance to DJ at Foundation events and build their skills. This was followed by an allotment which was purchased to give disabled participants a space to grow their own produce.
Over Christmas, funds were spent on creating hampers for elderly people in the community, which were then distributed by ex-Aston Villa player Ian Taylor. When schools were closed due to the pandemic, the funds allowed the Foundation to offer a programme of virtual classes to primary school children nationally, ensuring that children who needed the support still had access to resources which would ordinarily be available directly to schools through the Foundation’s schools’ provision.
The funds also allowed for the expansion of the Foundation’s Villa Vision programme, which provides eye tests and free glasses to children in Birmingham. Initially available to primary school children, the project was able to expand so that preschool children could also access its services. The funds also allowed children of NHS workers to claim free spaces on the Foundation’s Soccer Schools over Christmas, as a way of giving back to the key workers who have supported the country throughout the pandemic.
Head of the Aston Villa Foundation Guy Rippon said: "Thanks to Cazoo's Golden Goals we have been able to create and support a variety of local initiatives, supporting a wide demographic of the local community. We have been able to tackle issues which, without the support of Cazoo, we may not have been able to tackle so quickly."
Most recently the Foundation used some of this money to create care hampers for the nurses, logistics staff and volunteers who have been running the vaccination centre in the Holte End, as well as for the midwives who have been housed in the Holte pub running the ante-natal clinics which have been hosted at Villa Park throughout the pandemic.
Aston Villa Foundation ambassador and Harry Potter star Oliver Phelps helped deliver the hampers to some very deserving people.
