The Foundation Is Football

In 2004 an aging school building lay abandoned in the middle of one of the largest housing projects in the Lambeth area of London, England. Gang crime and violence were daily realities. The community was in dire need of something to help pull itself from their own abandonment.

Five years on, the Sports Action Zone (SAZ)--part community center, part sports complex--is delivering sports, education, vocational training, and volunteer opportunities to thousands of neighborhood residents.

Made possible by the Football Foundation, the UK's largest sports charity, SAZ represents the unique partnerships the foundation elicits between voluntary, public and corporate sectors to create sustainable change in the form of increased participation in sports, social inclusion, health, education and equalities.

In Lambeth, those principles turned an abandoned building into a permanent community center, which is not not just changing lives, but generations.

To date, the Foundation has provided 1,681 schools with new football facilities, funded over 480 changing pavilions, built over 220 artificial turf fields, given away over 263,000 uniforms, and supported 2,105 community initiatives using football as a vehicle to tackle life's greater challenges.