Lord’s Taverners Charity Organization Donates Sports Kits , Equipment to NGO
By Missang AKPET
A UK-based sports kit recycling charity organization The Lord’s Taverners has donated sports kits and equipment worth over thirty million naira to the Community Sport and educational Development Initiative (CSED) a sport for change NGO.
CSED is an NGO that seeks to use Nigerian children and youths participating in sports related activities to promote literacy and social well-being especially those living in rural and urban communities in the Niger Delta region.
The kits donated are mostly cricket, netball, badminton, football, casual sportswear and tracksuits.
Speaking with newsmen, a representative of CSED Initiative Dave Pemberton stated the new batch of equipments from The Lord’s Taverners will enable them empower three thousand children and youths in respect of supporting some of their basic sports kits needs.
“The donated kits will enable CSED Initiative train three hundred P.E. teachers in 2025, it is going to be a win-win situation for grassroots sports” he said.
The National coordinator of CSED Edema Fuludu said although The Lord’s Taverners was mainly set up as a cricket charity, it has over the years supported other sports at the grassroots level hinting that this batch is the 5th batch of sports kits CSED have received from the Lord’s Taverners since 2019.
“We received a correspondence of recent that The Lord’s Taverners sports kits recycling project is going to close in March 2025 as a result of financial constraint,
this news is a huge shock to us and the sports recycling community worldwide as Lord’s Taverners has a global
base of sports for change NGOs that they have supported in the past few decades.
“We in CSED Initiative, will forever remain grateful for the support we have received from The Lord’s Taverners especially in respect of the sport of netball where they have supported us with balls, bibs, netball jerseys, T-shirts and skirts. These donated kits gave us the courage to strive to revive the game of netball in Nigeria through our ongoing: “Project 2027” where we have trained and equipped more than three hundred and seventy P.E. Techers and community leaders” Fuludu said.
He however assured the management of Lord’s Taverners that the sports kits will be distributed for free to selected schools and vulnerable community groups like IDPs and refugees they currently work with, as well as new sets of schools and communities who will be expected to put the donated kit into good use.
Some of the prominent institutions that have benefitted from the kits donated by Lord’s Taverners in the past are Edo State Cricket Association, the cricket team of ABU Zaria, the cricket team of IDPs Uhogua, Cameroonian refugees in Ogoja (Cross River State), some selected schools in Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom and Taraba States have also benefitted from the free cricket kits that were donated by Lord’s Taverners to CSED Initiative.
