Hendon bring a Ray of Sunshine

Greensnet Editor
Thu 12 Apr 2012, 12:19

On Saturday 14 April, at half-time during our match against Kingstonian in the Ryman League Premier Division, the Greens will be making a presentation to the club's chosen charity Rays of Sunshine. The cheque for £2,000 has come from the FA Community Shield Fund, and after we reached the first round proper of the FA Cup in 2010-11, the club was invited to apply for the funding.

The funds are raised from the FA Community Shield, which was played at Wembley Stadium in August, and are available for distribution to community based initiatives. They were generated from the general admission ticket income net of match expenses and all profits from the sale of the match programme. The 2011 FA Community Shield (when Manchester United met Manchester City) contribution to the fund amounted to 32% of the total match day income.

City and United were allocated an equal section of the fund to donate to community initiatives of their choice, while another part of the fund was allocated to the 124 clubs that participated from the First Round Proper of the FA Cup last season. All clubs were able to nominate up to three local charities or community-based initiatives to receive its share of the fund. The remainder of the fund will be donated to The FA's Charity Partners. They have been selected for their outstanding work with football through the season and their details will be shown in the match programme.

As many supporters are aware, our chosen charity is Rays of Sunshine, a charity whose offices are based in Wembley, near to the FA's headquarters. Although they fulfil wishes for children nationally, they concentrate on the Wembley area. All of their Medical Advisors are Consultants based at the nearby Northwick Park Hospital so they realise many wishes from children in the Hendon, Wembley, Harrow, and Pinner areas.

Our supporters, who did their annual charity walk to Wingate & Finchley on Easter Monday, will also donate half the proceeds to Rays of Sunshine and the other half to the Supporters Trust.