A Successful Season!

Like Heart of Midlothian, Big Hearts has been on a journey. We’ve made real progress this season and now seems like a great time to reflect on some of our highlights.

In October we launched our Kinship Care Programme with an open day at Tynecastle. Around 100 families had a fantastic day gathering some vital information from our partner stalls, taking part in some football activity, enjoying some great food, as well as meeting some Hearts’ stars.

By December we were celebrating the first 8 weeks of the Kinship Care After School Club which we started in partnership with Mentor Scotland. 20 families participated in our pilot, which was a real success culminating in a Christmas celebration where families were joined by Robbo Claus.

We also held our first open to all AGM in December and released Big Hearts first ever Annual Report.

In January we started a 2nd Kinship Care After School Club group supporting another 20 families. The group was launched with a specific focus on identifying and supporting ‘hidden’ or unsupported Kinship Families.

February’s game against Kilmarnock at Tynecastle was Big Hearts Day where we marked the start of our Big Hearts Supporters initiative. The campaign designed to get Hearts’ fans on board to support the charity with time, effort and expertise got off to a fantastic start with over 1000 supporters signing up. The Hearts’ squad warmed up in Big Hearts T-shirts on the day and we opened the Big Hearts Zone in the Wheatfield Stand for the very first time.

Our Football Memories group had grown significantly by our April meeting. We now support 16 elderly gentleman with a Dementia diagnosis who spend 90 minutes reminiscing about all things Hearts!

This Month we announced the extension of our Football Memories group, a 2nd session will now run on the 2nd Tuesday of every month starting in July. We also will be taking all our participants to the Hampden Museum on May the 19th.

The hard work doesn’t stop at Big Hearts as the football season draws to a close. We’ll be continuing to grow our work across a number of projects. This will include the launch of the volunteer element of our Big Hearts Supporters initiative. Stay tuned to our social media channels and bighearts.org.uk for more information on the events we will be holding in early June, one which will be specifically for Big Hearts Supporters who are interested in volunteering.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you to all of you for supporting Big Hearts this season and we look forward to this support continuing in 2016/17.