Seven days into the FBB2020 challenge to raise £20,000 for our FBB Virtual School, we are delighted to report that the FBB Family has made an incredible start! We've been truly blown away by the response so far. In the first 3 days alone, we collectively covered 2711.95km and the campaign page had raised £3,662 by Sunday night...

Since then, your efforts have doubled down with the FBB Strava Club stats for this week showing more and more people joining our club and contributing towards the total distance!

Altogether since Monday, 160 members of the FBB family have registered a total of 404 activities on Strava, spanning 316hrs (That’s over 13 days of consecutive exercise!!!) and adding another 4,506.3km to the weekend’s activities. 

That brings our grand totals in Week 1 to: 
Money raised so far: £7,669 
Distance covered so far: 7218.25km 

To put that distance into context, that’s almost the total distance of a roundtrip from London to Baku in Azerbaijan, where the most far-flung matches of Euro 2020 would have taken place. To have covered that in just one week is truly epic!

BUT... The FBB 2020 isn’t a sprint. It’s the ultra marathon of the summer - our epic patron and resident athletic expert John McAvoy told us so. As James Reeves, FBB’s Community Manager says “Even though we’ve made an amazing start, we haven’t made it to half-time yet. Without wanting to sound like a commentator when your team is 1-0 up just before half-time, we’ve got to keep the pressure on going into the break. Except, there isn’t a break just yet. But that doesn’t matter, because over 160 people are currently keeping fit and healthy whilst supporting the next generation at the same time.” 

To help us smash our targets, please do keep sharing the campaign on social media with friends and family and try and get them involved - either by setting up their own page or by donating to our campaign page. 

Each week we’d also like to highlight some of the amazing individuals and teams who have supported the campaign so far:

Dulwich Hamlet Women’s FC - represented by Ceylon 

“It’s been an amazing first week! We are so delighted to have smashed our initial team target of £2000 already! We’ve now upped this to £5000 - we are very competitive and we are all pushing each other as this is part of our pre-season training. We’ve got people riding from London to Brighton, we’ve got people running 10km and back to work each day, and we’ve got people setting themselves 500km targets across the month. Please donate to our team page if you can!”

AFC Bluebirds - represented by Will and Hudson

Club Chairman, Hudson, said: "We're delighted to be fundraising for Football Beyond Borders. It is a charity that stands for something significant and deserves as much support as possible."

Will, Club Secretary added: "For the FBB 2020 Challenge, we will run, cycle and walk 1020km and raise a minimum of £1020. We've just arrived at our first virtual checkpoint, Hampden Park in Scotland and we're almost halfway to our fundraising target. FBB's Virtual School will be vital to so many young people over the next few months. The fundraising from this challenge will hopefully go a long way to improving the lives of hundreds of students. We are delighted to play just a small part and will continue to for the next year."

Dark Horses / London Gorrillas FC - represented by Adam

"Filling the void of Euro 2020 is not an easy task, so as well as getting us fit, the FBB2020 Challenge will hopefully take our minds off the fact that we should be watching Sancho and Sterling terrorise the Croatian defence. We've put together a team of runners and cyclists of varying prowess, from Dark Horses and London Gorillas, to try and contribute 1000km and £1000 to the FBB target. We have seen how FBB can transform the lives of young people, how it empowers them to find their voice and helps them mature and become an inspiration to their peers, so being able to help fund the continued support is fantastic."

Katrina - FBB Supporter & Vintage Books Senior Marketing Executive

"The work Football Beyond Borders has done to adapt to the pandemic and continue to support its young people is phenomenal. When I saw the FBB Challenge, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to set a target, raise awareness and give back. It’s been a joy to work in partnership with FBB on other campaigns and see the impact of the work they do first hand."

We are bringing together the whole FBB Family to travel 20,000 kilometres and raise £20,000 from now until Sunday 12th July 2020, the day that would have marked the now postponed Euro2020 final. Let's Go Beyond together.

To donate to the campaign, visit our page on JustGiving