England pals Mason Mount and Declan Rice joined teams again recently to help gift two Everyday Heroes with a £500 prize from PayPal.
Chelsea playmaker Mount and West Ham midfielder Rice grew up together as young players at the Stamford Bridge club’s academy and remain best friends away from football.
And they surprised two local heroes from the recent COVID-19 lockdown in the shape of Chris Gale, captain of Nailsea & Tickenham, and Colin Windrow, first team manager of MSB Woolton.
Chris came up with an idea to help his community, so began to use his one form of exercise a day, he would pick up goods for vulnerable people.
The club posted it on social media and started helping the community, with local supermarkets donating flowers to cheer up vulnerable people. The club initially were dropping these off at random, however, once word got out, people were nominating who they thought should receive them and it became a real focus of good will.
Members of the @England squad rewarded heroes of the grassroots game. Send money with PayPal to thank your heroes
— PayPal UK (@PayPalUK) June 19, 2020
Find out more here: https://t.co/rWmpelBuUX #PayPalitForward pic.twitter.com/zJbkWcHYwW
At the same time, the club outreached to another volunteer group offering the services of 50-60 players signed up to help out in any way they can. This has now evolved to players now washing elderly people’s cars and cutting their lawns as they are unable to maintain these on their own.
Meanwhile, Rice surprised Colin with his own call, after hearing how he kept his club connected to the community by helping with local foodbanks and medical deliveries to people in both south Liverpool and the surrounding areas.
Via a WhatsApp group, he’s engaged players of all ages from the club to help respond to any community needs such as a prescription collection or just to do some shopping and making sure that every request was responded to.
And this follows on from last week, when Three Lions striker Marcus Rashford surprised Tracy Ormisher from Lancashire, another of PayPal’s ‘Everyday Heroes’.
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