Charities

By engaging with communities and maintaining a programme of fundraising and charitable support, we are able to fully support one of our core values in ‘connecting the community to leisure’. Our nominated UK charity is WheelPower (formerly the British Wheelchair Sports Foundation), which is the owner of the national disability sports centre at Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games and the home of British Wheelchair Sport.

Leisure Connection manages Stoke Mandeville Stadium on behalf of WheelPower, which is a strong partnership together in not only managing the site, but raising money for disability sport and developing and promoting disability sport across the UK.

2008 saw WheelPower celebrate the 60th anniversary of its foundation by Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann, the founder of the Paralympic movement, who said, "If I ever did one good thing in my medical career it was to introduce sport into the rehabilitation of people with disabilities."
Before a disabled person can even start thinking about which sport to play, where to play it or even what to wear, they need to overcome their biggest barrier and find a suitable sports wheelchair. 

The WheelAppeal is aiming to raise £6,000,000 to provide over 2,000 disabled people with a new sports wheelchair, training and coaching that will enable them to participate in sport and enjoy competitive and recreational sport.  For more information visit www.wheelpower.org.uk

Leisure Connection’s commitment to the WheelAppeal is for all of our contracts to raise enough money for one chair each (£3000), a total of £90,000. If you wish to donate please click on the link www.justgiving.com/smsteam

Leisure Connection and its members have recently donated a whopping £40,000 to their nominated corporate charity – WheelPower, the national charity for wheelchair sport. 

Since December 2008, when VAT was dropped from 17.5% to 15%, Leisure Connection, in partnership with its 60,000 members and millions of customers, opted to donate the 2.5% difference to this inspirational charity. 

So far in 2009, Leisure Connection has been able to raise over £70,000 for WheelPower, which Leisure Connection works in partnership with at its Stoke Mandeville Stadium near Aylesbury.