An incredible 1087 football shirts have been donated in Jet’s World Cup Football Shirt Amnesty.  The national ‘Dig Out, Drop Off,

Donate’ initiative cashed in on World Cup fever, encouraging local communities around 17 of Jet’s sites to dig out and donate last season’s football shirts, or those that they had grown out of.

Run in partnership with VSO, the leading international development charity that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries, all of the shirts will now be packaged up and sent to South Africa to be distributed to children and adults through VSO’s network of volunteers and local projects.

VSO UK director, Brian Rockliffe, comments: "We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of everyone taking part in Jet’s football shirt amnesty. VSO is working with two of our South African partners, Far North and Children on the Move, to make sure the shirts reach vulnerable children, many of whom have lost parents to HIV and AIDS and live in poverty.

“In celebration of the World Cup, VSO and Far North, a community organisation in the Limpopo Province, will bring together teams from local villages for an inter-village football tournament. Donated shirts will be handed out to the hundreds of children taking part.  Children on the Move will distribute shirts through sports coaching, where education is incorporated into fun lessons.  For many, these are likely to be the first football shirts they will have ever owned."

Tony Conway, Jet’s marketing manager, comments: “We have been so impressed by the generosity of our customers in supporting this very worthy initiative.  The donated shirts are a real mix of sizes and teams, which is great as we know that every single one will be gratefully received when they reach their end destination in South Africa.  It’s encouraging to see our own local communities across the UK get behind an initiative that will make a real difference to other local communities thousands of miles away.”