Following a very substantial and informative application for a grant from West Lancashire Freemasons’ Charity (WLFC), that was submitted by Alice Ferrebe, a Trustee of Cerebral Palsy United Football Club (CPUFC), Alice and her fellow Trustees and committee members waited patiently for a reply.
It wasn’t long for a reply to come back, and to their joy, they were informed that WLFC had awarded them a donation of £10,000. As stated in their application, this donation was to be used to provide a weekend holiday for 20 children, accompanied by five staff including a physiotherapist and a paramedic, at Kepplewray, an inclusive activity and adventure centre in the lake District.
Cerebral Palsy United Football Club is a registered charity that was founded in 2014 to provide opportunities for participants in an inclusive environment. CPUFC offers a welcome to anyone who has Cerebral Palsy or an Acquired Brain Injury (CP/ABI) and wants to play football, regardless of their experience, age or gender. Their members have a range of mobility levels: some are ambulant, and some use walking aids or wheelchairs.
Many of their players have additional impairments such as learning and processing challenges, hearing and visual difficulties, as well as CP-associated health conditions like epilepsy, heart conditions and kidney problems. Due to the complexities of these conditions, most of the players have previously been excluded from the benefits of team sport. The club is based in the North West of England, and they have members from Lancashire, Liverpool, Wigan, Manchester, Cheshire, Cumbria and beyond.
The charity works with their members’ families in numerous ways, and have become a hub of support within the CP/ABI community in the region. 70% of the leadership team, (which includes a committee, a youth committee, and a Board of Trustees), is made up of people with lived experience of CP/ABI, and all their decisions and initiatives respond to specific needs identified by the members and their families. CPUFC are currently running 10 sessions per week across six centres, and have over 170 playing members, ranging in age from 2 to 43.
In 2019 and 2021, CPUFC took around 15 of their younger players for a weekend at Kepplewray, an inclusive activity centre in the Lake District. Under their team’s expert supervision, club members took part in a huge range of activities, including kayaking, climbing, lake-swimming, gill-scrambling and den-building. As a time of building even closer friendships and achieving previously unimagined levels of physical challenges, it was second-to-none. The club was unable to run this trip in 2022, as all their subs and income went to keeping their basic training sessions going. Kepplewray, as known from previous times there, is a place where everyone can adhere to the club’s moto: ‘Be the Best You Can Be’.
Following this year’s very successful weekend trip to Kepplewray, Alice Ferrebe wrote to Alan Riley of WLFC to thank WLFC for their very generous donation. In her thank you letter, Alice said: “I just wanted to say the most enormous thank you to the West Lancashire Freemasons for the amazing club trip we were able to take to the Lake District at the end of summer 2024. This was entirely thanks to your organisation’s support.
I’ve put together a thank you film in the hope that you can show it to your committee to let them know how well their generous donation was spent.” To view the short video, please 
