Many of the The Foundry\u2019s 35 programmes use the power of football to deliver their positive messages, and Ferdinand says the sport and the Club will inspire thousands upon thousands of young people to lead healthy, productive and successful careers and, ultimately, lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball nurtures a lot and I speak about it in myself \u2013\u00a0my parents laid the foundations,\u00a0and football and West Ham as a football club nurtured it,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cAnd this place is going to epitomise that.\u00a0The stuff that we\u2019ve got going on here,\u00a0the business studies,\u00a0activities for people to come and be active on the fantastic pitch \u2013\u00a0I wish I would have had a pitch like this as a kid \u2013\u00a0where it can get kids off their tablets\u00a0and get them more active.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that lays the foundations for life, being able to be educated in a place\u00a0where they may not feel isolated\u00a0and feel they can be heard and be seen.\u00a0You learn in a different capacity when you feel like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, to have a place like this\u00a0in the heart of the community in Beckton, which can lay the foundations for kids in life, epitomises what our Football Club is about.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way to do that is to have a safe space to come, which this is. Us as a Football Club\u00a0and the Foundation are at the heart of it,\u00a0going into communities. We\u2019re a community-driven, community-based Football Club.\u00a0No matter where we go in the world, we always start in the community\u00a0because the community is where the heart and loyalty is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the The Foundry\u2019s 35 programmes use the power of football to deliver their positive messages, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-222665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}