Boots2Africa will be hosting their second preloved football boot donation event at Town in the FanZone from 1pm ahead of Monday’s home game against Newcastle.

Boots2Africa is a small community interest company established in 2016 with the aim of collecting and delivering one million pairs of preloved donated football boots and astros to children and young adults across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.

At their first Portman Road collection at the Blackburn game earlier in the season 96 pairs were donated along with other football kit.

Earlier this month Boots2Africa made an 'education tourism' trip with Colchester United's Football in the Community Team and African Adventures to Nakuru in Kenya.

Working daily at The Walk Centre, a primary and junior years school entirely funded by charitable donations, in a week they decorated a section of their recently-constructed new classroom block and spent hours teaching and engaging with the children, the majority of whom live in the city's London slum, which is adjacent to the school. They also played lots of football, including assisting in the delivery of the children's first ever structured coaching session.

In the coming months they will be arranging shipments of more donated kit to Kenya, Ghana and Malawi, having now collected more than 1,100 boots in the eight months since they began operating via collections at more than 30 grassroots clubs and eight schools.

Iain Finch, co-founder of Boots2Africa, said: “Boots2Africa are delighted to be welcomed back to Ipswich Town on Easter Monday, our recent trip to Nakuru highlighted just how vital a good pair of shoes is in preventing disease and infection entering the bloodstream through the feet in the slums across Africa.

“That the children can wear Boots2Africa to play better football is a bonus and in the longer term will hopefully enhance the continent's player stock to the global game we love.

“We'd like to encourage Ipswich Town fans to donate their old boots and grassroots club kit to Boots2Africa and to take a look at the video and daily diaries on our Boots2Africa Facebook page and our YouTube video channel.

“We appreciate we can't fix poverty across a continent with a nearly a quarter of the world's population, but with 350,000 children of school age across Essex and Suffolk and 40,000 of them playing football in leagues every weekend with community empowerment at grassroots level we can do our best to ensure millions of children don't needlessly suffer without shoes when as a region we've so much to give.”

Write to Boots2Africa via info@boots2Africa.co.uk if you'd like to get involved in collections or donations, their website can be found here, while they can be followed on Twitter here: @Boots2Africa.

Photos: Contributed

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