Hockey Club Report

Sports Club Report Sport - Hockey Club Report

Old Bristolians’ Sports Club in the Community

It was late on a Friday when Edd Thompson from hockey put the question; how do we help the

It has been a strange and challenging year for our Sports Clubs. All sport stopped from March through June but Cricket and Hockey finally played some matches in July and Rugby trained in a socially distanced format in August. Despite the restrictions our members have been working hard to stay connected and relevant in the Communities we live in.

In October, the Hockey Club reached out to Rugby and Cricket for support to providing Free School Meals within our area. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised – but the response was magnificent! kids near us with getting school meals during their holiday? We decided to donate some of the hockey match fees and put out a request to Hockey and Sports Club members for further contributions. Within 20 hours we had £2,000. Our final total was £2,700.

Nels Kitchen (Nick and Lisa our Club House caterers) offered their time and organised deals with Woods Family butchers and Hobbs House bakers to help. With around 20 volunteers to help deliver the meals we were ready, with a capacity of 60 hot meals a day. Edd was busy reaching out to identify families and centres that required our services. We appeared in Best of Bristol and Bristol Post to get the word out. Many families in Bristol had not received their vouchers, and contacted us as back up to the main Council schemes.

We supplied families from North Somerset, South Glos and Bristol City Centre with hot meals plus fruit from Monday 26th October to Sunday 1st November. By Sunday we had cooked and delivered just under 400 meals.

Our team were touched by how some of the families reacted and were so relieved that we could do something for people who were really struggling. Some of the kids took the time to send notes of thanks.

We had money left over so over Christmas the OBs’ elves were once again busy on the Free School Meals. We prepared a box of food and a small gift for every child that we could contact.

Each box of food contained enough for at least 15 meals including fresh fruit, drinks, cereal and milk. Thanks go to Tesco, who picked all our food from their shelves and loaded Nel’s kitchen van. Failand Club house was turned into a food warehouse and production line where we prepared and packed 50 boxes of food - enough for more than 800 meals! These were