Sean Mendez

Sean Mendez spends his life making other lives better. When he was young his mother worked as a primary school teacher while he loved nothing better than to kick a ball. During the time his mother taught at St Cuthbert with St Miatthias Church of England primary, he started an after school football club. “The seed was planted then,” he says, surrounded by refugees and asylum seekers who also loved football, a spark was lit inside Mendez to try to make the children's daily lives better.

Fittingly St Cuthbert school community’s vision is ‘inspired by the parable of the Good Samaritan, from the Bible (Luke 10:25-37), where we are encouraged to love one another with courage and  compassion. Through friendship, kindness and thoughtfulness, we will nurture each other to learn and flourish as individuals.’

In 2007, Mendez set about raising money to create Solidarity Sports, https://www.solidaritysports.org, a charity which nurtures the wellbeing of disadvantaged children by building happy memories, through sport, art, visits to museums and short trips away, to the seaside or park.

Solidarity Sports operates from a colourful small office in Lillie Road, with a fake grass floor, donated by Earls Court Development Company. Mostly funded by trusts and foundation and private individuals, the charity also has volunteers who help with the 220 children and raise funds. “At the moment we need to diversify,” says Mendez, “During the Covid pandemic 6,000 charities have folded with 50,000 at risk of funding shortfalls in 2021. This is mainly because large fundraising events have been cancelled.”

To keep in touch with donors, who Mendez calls Memory Makers, he posts stories about events every month. “Because of Covid, we have had to adapt really quickly,” he explains, “Normally we do lots of trips, now there is more mentoring, one volunteer with one child.” The charity quickly went to zoom, all the children were given a laptop donated by Sky Television and they are used to do group dancing, cooking and reading. To boost the children’s immune systems 10,000 vitamin D tablets have been donated by Vitabiotics.

The 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy also had an impact, says Mendez. “We lost a family of five, three children and two parents. Twelve year old Firdaws Hashim was one of them. Her dream was to go to Disneyland.” So Mendez and his team organised trips in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to Disneyland Paris.