Arsenal in the Community celebrated its 30th anniversary at Sunday’s match against Everton.
The team were welcomed pitchside before kick-off, where they unveiled a banner to mark the milestone. This will be installed permanently on the upper tier at Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal in the Community has worked with more than 1.3 million individuals since its inception in 1985, delivering six and half million hours of sessions. Through its sport, education and training, social inclusion, diversity and disability football initiatives, the team has made a significant contribution to the lives of many people in north London and beyond.
Close to 1,000 young people have come through Arsenal in the Community’s trainee scheme, with many graduates of the programme still with the club today or working in jobs such as police officers and teachers.
The team’s social inclusion work on local estates and in parks and facilities around north London uses football as a route to engage young people before helping them into further education and employment pathways.
The Arsenal Double Club - an innovative education programme which fuses football with classroom subjects such as numeracy, literacy and foreign languages - has seen the community team work with more 30,000 primary school pupils to date.
In total, Arsenal in the Community delivers more than 350 sessions to 5,000 individuals each week in north London and, through the Arsenal Gap Programme, around the world.
With the opening of the club's sports facility at Emirates Stadium this spring, the scale of Arsenal in the Community’s work is set to grow further still.
Click here for a ‘Behind the Numbers’ infographic on Arsenal in the Community.
Click here for some personal accounts on the impact the Arsenal in the Community and the Arsenal Foundation teams have had.
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