London Mets Youth Baseball & Softball Club

The London Mets is a baseball and softball club for young people and adults, based at Finsbury Park in London. The aim of the club is to promote and develop baseball and softball in the North London area and to provide a safe and fun environment for young people and adults to enjoy sport. The membership of the club reflects the diversity of the local community with members from many nationalities and ethnic origins. The club is run entirely by volunteers and funded by small grants and donations.

As well as the club's own teams, they also organise a large outreach programme providing free training in schools, parks and communities - more than 20,000 participants have taken part since 2007.

London Mets are planning to expand their youth teams to other geographical locations surrounding their main base at Finsbury Park in order to allow young people to play without having to travel too far. In 2010 they began an after-school league in Hackney and are going to spend the grant money on buying a new set of equipment to be used in our training programme for adult beginners. They're also looking into additional training courses for four of their coaches to increase the standard of their qualifications and provide additional support and capacity for the beginners programme.

Neil Warne, Director, said: Our club's main aim is to promote and develop access to baseball and softball and with this grant we will do exactly that. Our £1,000 award will be spent on buying new equipment for our adult beginners training programme, for example gloves and safety equipment. We're also going to get two of our coaches through their Level 2 Coaching Course as this will mean we're better able to work with our beginners during weekly sessions."

If you'd like to get involved, visit www.londonmeteors.co.uk.