Milton Keynes Dons Sport and Education Trust (MK Dons SET) is a Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee (number 1123762) and an award winning organisation.
The team that brought the Football Club to Milton Keynes always intended to develop a robust, innovative and sustainable community legacy. Establishing this organisation represents a significant step forward in ensuring that a true legacy is developed. The SET organise the delivery of work in five main streams: Health, Education, Social Inclusion, Participation and Football Development. These themes are supported by Business Development and Finance and Administration departments that play a key role in enabling the SET to deliver their work.
This gives the SET a breadth of operation that allows them to be an influential partner in many aspects of the local community and make a significant contribution regionally and nationally.
Each year over 50,000 adults and children benefit from activities such as holiday courses, match day clubs, study support, tackling obesity programmes, team coaching, mini soccer social inclusion multi sports programmes. These are delivered in partnership with a range of agencies and organisations including Milton Keynes Council, NHS: MK, Schools and Junior Football Clubs.
The organisation has grown from one full time employee with 15 part time staff in 2004 to 27 full-time, 31 part-time staff and over 50 volunteers by last year. The SET try to be a learning organisation by actively seeking out best practice amongst Football Clubs and other local, regional and national agencies and organisations, in order that their programmes set benchmarks for quality and service.
MK Dons SET aims to:
● to advance and assist in advancing education
● to provide or assist in the provision of facilities for recreation and other leisure time occupation in the interests of social welfare and with the object of improving the conditions of life for those for whom the facilities are provided
● to promote or assist in promoting community participation in healthy recreation
● to relieve sickness and disability and to preserve and protect health
● and to promote any other purpose which is charitable according to English law
We are part of the BOBi (Berkshire , Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire inclusion ) league where will have 12 teams entered from the ages under8’s, under12’s, under16’s and then into the Adults with the levels as follows;
- Conference – Minimal mobility and severed learning need
- League 2 – limited mobility mobile with moderated learning need
- League 1 – mobile , mild learning need and mental health
- Championship – Higher ability and mental health
- Premiership – Mental Health
We also have a deaf team who play the championship level as well as framed and wheel chair football and are lucky enough to have 8 powerchairs which in previous years have entered the powerchair league this has not been the possible for the last year due to the decline in participants
but we do still run training sessions for this area .We have had to halt our session at present due to the covid 19 restrictions but we have plans in place ready for the return , The players however are not just left , we engage with them often and set them challenges so as to keep an eye their physical and mental health.
The league for the season 2019/20 was cancelled due to the current situation but the season before saw us winning the league in the under 12’s and under16’s category. with many tournaments along the way the under 16’s team came home with 6 out of 7 winners trophies and this includes playing tournaments at West Ham, Fulham and Norwich to name a few.
We pride ourselves with the fact that nobody is excluded from our programmes and we will always adapt to accommodate a player. As a DXTL inclusion team we are looking forward to working with Milton Keynes Dons Sport and Education trust in the future. They are first football league club to come on board and Inclusion Liaison officer says we are extremely grateful for Milton Keynes Dons Sport and Education trust to come on board and to have a good working relationship alongside them in promoting grassroots sport as we are a voluntary CIC organisation.
For further information/correspondents email inclusion team – inclusion.dxtl@gmail.com .
