The Covid pandemic brought football to a halt in March 2020 – but it didn’t stop Arsenal from making a difference in the community. We just had to take a slightly different approach…
As well as launching an emergency Covid fund, through which The Arsenal Foundation helped local food banks, homeless charities, education support services and more, the club mobilised staff from Arsenal in the Community and beyond, as well as sterling local volunteers, to turn Emirates Stadium into a distribution centre for food and other essential items during lockdown. This work, in conjunction with HIS Church and Islington Council, lasted from early in the first lockdown until supporters were allowed back into stadiums, initially in limited numbers, in the summer of 2021.
Even before that, in the days immediately after the first lockdown in March 2020, the club had acted fast, providing cars to help NHS staff get to work. And our support for the medical profession continued, with food drops for our local hospitals the Whittington and Homerton through that spring and summer.
If you scroll through the gallery below you will see that Arsenal men’s and women’s team managers Mikel Arteta and Joe Montemurro got involved, too. They were at London Colney in December 2020 to send the truck that would deliver our 500,000th meal (and counting) to the local community.
The support didn’t end there because, once vaccination rollout began, Emirates Stadium became a vaccination centre as well. Arsenal didn’t envisage that our new home would be used in these ways when we moved here in 2006, but as ever it was an honour to be able to serve the local community – especially during such difficult times for so many people.
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