—West Ham United FC"West Ham United Football Club are pleased to add their support to the Dribblethon being undertaken by Chris Rowe in aid of the Richard House Childre's Hospice, which is an official charity of the club. It wishes him every success with the event and everyone looks forward to Chris completing his challenge at the Boleyn Ground in September."
It was late December 2008 when Chris Rowe, a recently qualified youth football coach at Forest Glade Football Club, started seeking sponsorship to provide additional kit and equipment for his newly formed under 12's team. As the result of a conversation with a friend who runs a swimming club Chris realised that organising a fundraising event would probably have much more chance of helping him acheive his goal.
During the course of one of his weekly runs Chris thought about what kind of sponsored event he could organise and soon had the idea of performing a sponsored football 'dribble'. As Chris works for Barclays he started to formulate the idea of dribbling from Forest Glade's home ground to one of the London Premier League clubs. By the end of the run he had even thought about how he could maximise the amount of funds raised by supplementing the personal sponsorship he hoped to receive from his friends and work colleagues with a website featuring a rotating football that he could approach companies to sponsor a hexagon on.
Chris soon realised that the fundraising potential of such an event could be far larger than his immediate team needs and he felt that as he supported a number of children's charities through Give As You Earn one of these could benefit along with Forest Glade.
Being a bit of a closet West Ham fan Chris decided to perform some basic research on the club and to his amazement he found that their chosen charity of the year, Richard House Children's Hospice, was one he had supported for the last 8 years. The concept of a 'dribblethon' took shape once Chris checked the distance between the 2 clubs and found it was close to that of a marathon. Chris felt that he had found the perfect match for his idea.
Chris decided that the first thing to do was to find out if Richard House would be happy with such a fundraising event taking place. He also hoped that the charity would be able to help with the discussions with West Ham. Chris decided to call Richard House out of the blue and spoke to Viv Talbot their Community Fundraising Manager. Chris was really pleased with how enthusiastically the idea was received. Viv thought that the event had the novelty factor that the charity were often looking for when trying to think of fundraising ideas. Viv instantly offered to talk to West Ham on Chris' behalf and they agreed to meet within the week to discuss the idea further.
By the time Chris went to meet Viv a week later she had already thought about how Richard House could build on the idea in a significant way. Richard House wanted Chris to perform his dribblethon in September during Childrens Hospice week and for it to act as a focal point during the weeks activities and that they would invite local schools and youth organisations to make part in their own dribblethon events in aid of the hospice. Although Chris had supported Richard House for the last 8 years he had never visited the hospice before. The meeting with Viv gave Chris the opportunity to be shown round the facility and he found it to be a very special 'house'. As a father of 3 children Chris found the tour very humbling and inspiring and it strengthened his resolve to make the dribblethon as successful as possible.
The final step for Chris before he proceeded any further with organising the event itself was to run the idea by his club. Chris presented the outline of the event to Forest Glade's Executive Committee and the clubs chairman offered his full support straight away . The club also agreed that all the teams at the club would take part in their own dribblethon to help raise even more funds. As part of the meeting Chris discovered that the club had a serious ambition to become a Charter Standard Community Club and to acheive this they had to affiliate at least one girls team to the FA and to introduce football for the disabled through the FA ' s soccerbility scheme . Chris realised at this point that the clubs funding requirements outweighed the immediate needs of his own team and he could see that through his event he could directly support the club and help it work towards meeting its objective.
What started for Chris as a simple desire to raise money for his team had rapidly transformed into a far more serious fundraising event for a very worthwhile charity and a football club that hoped to extend it's reach into the local community.
Chris was happy to rise to the challenge. The Londondribblethon was born.
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