You would not expect to find coaches from the Celtic FC Foundation in Brixton. But even the torrential rain in south London has not stopped them and four local teams from turning out to help launch a programme that will provide girls and young women from underprivileged backgrounds in the local area with a chance to play football.
It is one of several initiatives established since the foundation began working in London to mark Celtic’s 125th anniversary in 2013. Another, based in Hackney, called Breaking Barriers helps integrate refugee and asylum-seeking communities through the sport.
“It is a really good opportunity for people to get involved,” says Vladyslav Kysil, a former professional player from Ukraine who has been working as a coach for the foundation since moving to the UK in 2023. He admits he was surprised to see a Scottish club so active in England’s capital. “But when I read the history, I realised they have real heritage in London.”
Celtic were founded in 1887 as a charity to provide hot meals for Irish immigrants by Brother Walfrid, a Marist Brother who had moved to Glasgow from Sligo in Ireland and was the deputy headteacher at a local school. He moved to London’s East End in 1893 and continued to work with underprivileged children in Bow and Bethnal Green. It was in his memory that the foundation decided to expand its reach beyond its traditional heartland, with programmes in place in Sligo and several cities in the United States as well as in London.
“This is not an exercise for us,” says the Celtic foundation’s chief executive, Tony Hamilton. “This is inherent in who we are and it’s in our DNA. It’s why the football club was formed: we want to provide meaningful change for people who live in our communities.”
In Glasgow, they include a number of long-running schemes such as working with young offenders just released from prison and opening Celtic Park four times a week to feed anyone struggling. “They come for a hot meal,” Hamilton says. “There’s no registration. There’s no questions. If they need to be signposted to something else that we do or one of our partners do then fine. But really that’s providing a meal when they need a meal.”
A fuel bank initiative that provides vouchers for electricity and gas has been launched, with 75% of the foundation’s budget spent in the Glasgow area. A Christmas appeal donates £400,000 to local families, homeless people and refugees, which Hamilton says “is important for us as a club effectively born of immigrants”.
Since Hamilton’s arrival, in 1994, the focus has been on trying to help other communities as well. The foundation has donated £100,000 that will help feed people in Gaza through the United Nations World Food Programme and has established a network of programmes in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
“For a long time the concept of charity was marginalised,” he says. “When Fergus McCann took over [as Celtic’s largest shareholder] in the same year I arrived, one of the first things that he did was bring it back. Since then it’s really really kicked on and we don’t talk about religion. We don’t care who people are – all faiths and none.
“We’ve got a relationship with the school and the church that Brother Walfrid went to in Underwood Road in Whitechapel and from there it stemmed out into various parts and we’re thriving in London at the moment. We’ve got 11 supporters’ clubs in and around the city and we raise a lot of money there. The economy is markedly different in London and in New York than it is in Glasgow so it’s very, very important for us.”
The foundation is mainly funded by Celtic and also raises money by hosting charity events including golf days and a biannual legends match. It receives a fraction of public funding compared with counterparts in England, which benefit from schemes such as the Premier League’s Kicks programme, and Hamilton acknowledges the generosity of the club’s fans from all over the world enables them to reach so many people.
“The Celtic supporters have got a really strong social conscience,” he says. “A lot of them support what Celtic FC Foundation does and a lot of them do their own thing in their own community. We’ve got a network of people who are a bit wealthier than I would be who put in a considerable amount and we’ve got some commercial partners as well who invest in what we do. But the credit goes to the people like the Celtic supporters who go and raise the money that’s really important. This is about the people who put their hands in their pockets.”
