Local community heroes will be celebrated up and down the country from Friday 12 January to Saturday 20 January as the EFL, EFL Trust, 72 EFL Clubs and their Community Club Organisations launch the first-ever EFL Community Weekends.
Across the period, Clubs, managers and players will mark the incredible work that community staff and volunteers deliver 365 days per year, while participants from community programmes will be honoured by special visits from players and matchday activities.
As part of matchday activations, fans will get the chance to hear from participants that have had their lives changed or even saved by their Club’s community work and find out more details about the range of projects and ways to get involved.
Pompey’s first EFL Community Hero 2024
Gill Ripiner is a perfect example to celebrate this EFL Community Weekend. She has volunteered for Pompey in the Community for over 5 years, mainly on our Pompey Pedals programme which provides free accessibility to cycling for those with additional needs. In addition to volunteering across Bransbury and Alexandra Park but she is a serial volunteer across the city. If she’s not bucket collecting for us or our partner charities at Fratton Park she can be found marshalling local runs like Run Walk Local Portsmouth or even taking charge of the runners outside Portsmouth Historic Dockyard at the Great South Run.
Pompey Pedals is just one example of how volunteers are vital to our work. Led by David Bradley, who equally deserves this accolade, the Pompey Pedals volunteers volunteer thousands of hours every year and hundreds of participants wouldn’t be able to access cycling without their hard work and dedication.
If you’d like to join or find out more about Pompey Pedals, head here: www.pompeyitc.co.uk/pompey-pedals
Volunteering Opportunities
The team are always looking for volunteers and are actively encouraging new people to join. If you fancy joining Gill and David in making an impact with hundreds of people every week then please click the button below.
Run Great South for us!
Alongside this, many of our volunteers also help us fundraise including bucket collections, personal challenges and running the Great South. If you’d like to join us and wave to Gill at the Great South Run, you can join our team below. We have thousands of loyal supporters and hundreds of dedicated volunteers we could mention, but a huge congratulations to you Gill for being crowned Pompey’s 2024 EFL Community Hero.
