Manchester City’s life-changing community football campaign, Cityzens Giving, is back for a third year as we ask fans to help us make a difference to communities around the world.
As in previous years, supporters will decide how the £400,000 pledged by City Football Group and its partners is distributed between six worthy projects in cities across the globe.
Run by inspiring young leaders, these community-based football programmes use the power of the beautiful game to tackle social issues affecting young people in their city.
Demonstrating a truly global approach to citizenship, this campaign brings together the City Football Group family as fans of Manchester City, New York City and Melbourne City vote for the project they find most inspiring.
This year, we are supporting initiatives in Manchester, to tackle youth unemployment; New York City, to get young people healthy; Melbourne, to promote social inclusion; Mexico City, providing a safe space for children to play football; Beijing, to bring together young people with and without intellectual disabilities; Bandung in Indonesia, where we’re using football to tackle substance abuse.
We’ll be shining the spotlight on the incredible work completed at each of these projects in the coming week and you can find out more and vote at the Cityzens Giving website.
The more votes a project gets, the more funding it will receive, with voting closing on Christmas Eve.
By 2017 City Football Group and its partners will have donated more than £1.5million to Cityzens Giving, and in addition to this year’s initiatives they will continue to fund projects in São Paulo, Cape Coast in Ghana, Kolkata, Cape Town, Barranquilla and Kuala Lumpur.
Cityzens Giving encourage fans to positively impact the lives of others each Christmas, but the effect goes far beyond the festive period.
In June this year, we welcomed young leaders from across the globe to the City Football Academy as they took part in a week-long community football leadership summit.
Utilising the 30 years’ experience and expertise of City in the Community, we provided these young people with mentoring and training, which will help them increase the effect of their dedicated work.
For Roosevelt, an 18-year-old leader at Manchester football and music project, Boots and Beats, it was an invaluable experience.
“Cityzens Giving changed my life and over the past three years, this project has given me the skills to do the same for other young people,” he explained.
“It was fantastic to meet other leaders and share our experiences. We all face different challenges but are incredibly passionate about making a difference in our community and the support of Manchester City fans is vital in allowing us to do that.”
Stay tuned to mancity.com as we introduce the incredible people making a difference in their community over the coming weeks.
Choose your cause and vote now at www.cityzensgiving.org/manchester
