Simon Perruzza reflects on 19 years helping people in Cheltenham and surrounding areas through the power of football and movement and previews an upcoming event at the cricket festival.
Watch the full chat with Simon Perruzza CEO of The Cheltenham Town Community Trust below:
The Trust’s first quiz and using our brains not Google
I met Simon Perruzza, an effervescent and warm Brummie, two weeks ago at Cheltenham Town Community Trust’s inaugural football quiz – held at the main bar in Whaddon Road. Fortunately, I was helping Chris Coley compere the evening so was saved the challenge of answering some of Coley’s taxing questions – some of which dated back the 1950s.
“I think it was one of the hardest quizzes I’ve eve been involved with, but I was told to expect that,” Perruzza told Sport and Life at our HQ recently – with a broad smile on his face.
“I think our table was pretty good because we could think about the 70s, 80s and even so it was really, really tough, but we pulled some gems out.”
Perruzza isn’t complaining. He’s been CEO of the Trust since its inception in 2007 and a big ethos is helping people feel healthier in brain and body. And he believes testing ourselves without being able to look up answers on our mobile phone is important to keeping our cognitive powers.
“I loved technology through the last fifteen to twenty years and I’ve really engaged and embraced technology, but it’s just overkill now.”
Nearly two decades helping people through football
Perruzza came to the role at the Trust after a varied and successful career in business and football coaching – having worked developing youngsters at Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion.
But he believes he’s found the right fit for his skills in his current role – hence the fact he’s still enjoying it nearly decades on.
“I really did enjoy the coaching. But I realised very quickly there were a lot of younger coaches coming through.
“So I think for me my business background and my coaching and community experience I was more suited to going into that leadership management.”
And since the day he first drove down to Cheltenham 19 years ago, Perruzza and his team have touched the lives of a vast swathe of people in the area from small children to a centenarian.
“To capture it, we work from from four years up to, at one point, working in care homes with a one-hundred-and-one-year-old.”
Don’t worry, the trust staff weren’t getting 100 year-olds to play football – but encouraging movement remained a key theme.
“A couple of our coaches were going in and they were doing the shuffleboard and the curling they can do indoors and just getting them active, throwing some little sponge balls around.”
The Trust’s core mission
Football is the main medicine the trust dishes out. Using it as a way to develop kids’ confidence, fitness and social skills.
“Our staple, our core is a lot of school work, working with the after school clubs, holiday programmes.
“We’re looking to get children, people, everybody, active who joins our programmes.”
Educating teenagers who’ve left the traditional route
Slick soccer skills is far from the limit of what the trust offers youngsters. They also provide educational qualifications up to degree level.
“We’ve got a post 16 education programme. It’s for school leavers who don’t necessarily want to go to another college or sixth form.
“We said ‘why don’t you come to the football club and learn at the football club?’
“We’ve got a year twelve and a year thirteen group. And then they can stay with us and go onto a foundation degree.”
The numbers
Developing the hearts, bodies and minds of young people is hard to quantify. But Perruzza has estimated a number that underscores the Trust’s huge impact.
“We have a social value of 5.6 million pounds. The funding we receive, any monies we bring into the trust in terms of fundraising that money is reinvested in the trust. The social return is about 5.6 million.
“Every year we work with five, maybe six thousand individuals.”
Football and deprived areas
Perruzza tells me that 60 precent of football clubs are based in deprived areas. Hence the need for clubs to help their neighbours.
He also says there’s a misperception that Cheltenham is a wholly affluent town.
“Whaddon, Hesters’ Way, St. Paul’s. Areas of Cheltenham are in the top 10 percent of the most deprived areas in the country.
“This is the bizarre thing you can drive around the corner in Cheltenham and there’s a million-pound property, drive around the other corner and it’s the total opposite.
“And we struggle to receive funding sometimes because people think because we’re in Cheltenham, we don’t need the money.”
Cricket festival and funding
If you’d like to help the Trust and enjoy your cricket, you may be interested to learn Perruzza and his team are hosting a space at the Cheltenham Cricket Festival this year – you can book a spot for a company event or buy a ticket as an individual.
“We ran our first event at the cricket festival last year. We’re doing it again this year. We have a tented area and we invite local partners, businesses to come along.
“Have a good day watching the cricket, have some entertainment, have some hospitality.”
CLICK HERE for more on events organised by The Cheltenham Town Community Trust and the courses offered.
