Birmingham County FA and its Save Today, Play Tomorrow programme have been awarded £25,000 to help deliver a Carbon Literacy for Grassroots Football Climate Education Course to clubs and volunteers across the West Midlands. 

The Community Environment Fund was launched in October 2023 by West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). The Fund has £1m of grant funding available from the Government’s Commonwealth Games Legacy Enhancement Fund to support communities in delivering initiatives that improve the environment and people’s lives.

It is hoped over the next 12 months this funding will provide subsidised accessible and inclusive Carbon Literacy training both in-person and online to hundreds of grassroots volunteers and participants at clubs of all sizes, supporting them and their local communities to take positive action against climate change. 

By bringing people in on the back of their strong club-individual relationship, the education course provides learners with an understanding of how they can apply practical solutions leading to potential carbon saving within football, but it will also build climate understanding more generally and help foster long term behavioural change, leading to benefits across a number of other aspects of people’s lives that leads to wider significant impacts at a community level

With this funding, the delivery of the project has the potential to have a hugely positive environmental impact on the participants and the clubs they represent. Participants will develop an understanding of football’s impact on the environment, while becoming equipped with information on how to lessen this for the good of the game and their communities

Sustainability Manager for Birmingham County FA, Richard Lindsay, said: “Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our generation. While grassroots football is not the cause; most clubs are SME sized, often loss-making, volunteer led enterprises with a microscale carbon footprint, we know there is an appetite for change with 86% of our grassroots football clubs believing the game should do more to reduce its environmental impact. 

“Thanks to the WMCA and this funding, we can now accelerate our bespoke education programme and massively increase the huge potential for engagement and change, as the scale on which people share a close affinity with their community club is perhaps unparalleled in any other sport, activity or business”. 

To make an enquiry about the course, please email savetodayplaytomorrow@birminghamfa.com

For more information on ‘Save Today, Play Tomorrow’, please CLICK HERE