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Category: Events

Published: 02 July 2025

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Ten years ago, in 2015, Janene Butters, the football club CEO, chatted to Kim Grantham and asked for ideas of how the club could become more involved in the community.

Kim, always a great ideas person and a mega-efficient organiser as well, had a germ of an idea: a coffee morning with add-ons at the club which would offer companionship to local residents who no longer had Darby & Joan or the Evergreens to visit and who therefore lacked a meeting place that was warm, comfortable and sociable.  The Saints Community Project was born.

Who would ever have thought that ten years later we would be celebrating this important anniversary with a “Summer Holiday” themed day with musical entertainment, with cake, with a wonderful cold buffet and with the Mayor and Mayoress joining us – well, it happened on 25 June 2025.  The Mayor took the opportunity to give special thanks from the whole town and he presented her with an engraved glass plaque as per the attached photograph.

In those ten years, the project has grown from fewer than 10 regulars to around 130.  Some come and some go, but most come and just keep coming.  In addition to getting together and as well as enjoying musical entertainment, the attendees are also able to benefit from advice via South Northants Volunteer Bureau and Community Contact, via the police and via the various departments of the local council; we have also had banks visit to offer advice.  Recently we have been given some reconditioned laptops so internet access can be assured for anyone who does not usually have this facility at home. 

And we not only offer all of that “in house, Saints Community Project also goes “on tour”.  Every year there are outings: this year it is Stoke Bruerne and a trip on a canal boat as well as an excursion to the pantomime at Milton Keynes.

Saints Community Project offers an invaluable resource to the community; it continues to grow from strength; it is run entirely by volunteers and we are immensely grateful to each and every one.  Who ever would have thought that Kim would grow such an immense community project from that initial germ of a coffee morning.  Thanks Kim.