The Leeds Rhinos Foundation have received praise from the Leeds City Council this week on the back of picking up the ‘Best Overall Contribution’ award at the Child Friendly Leeds awards
In the year the Leeds Rhinos Foundation will celebrate its tenth anniversary the charity has received worthy recognition from the city’s leaders for its contribution to helping improve the lives of young people.
At the recent Leeds Rhinos Golden Decade Celebration dinner, Leeds City Council’s Chief Executive, Tom Riordan, spoke glowingly on stage about the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and the work they do with the Rhinos players to encourage healthy and positive lifestyles.
“If you wanted to invent a model team for the city, then you would invent the Leeds Rhinos, they epitomise everything that you’d want to encapsulate a city like Leeds,” said Riordan.
“One reason is the achievement and that commitment to continuous improvement and excellence and the other is the values the club has.
“Whenever we try and get people to come along and help us with the stuff that’s really tough, those kids that don’t do well at school, who don’t have the leg up to start with, who have come to a fork in the road and are going to go off the wrong way if they don’t get the right tap on the shoulder, people like me can’t appeal to those kids, they are not going to listen to people like me, but they are going to listen to people like Kevin Sinfield and the players and the Leeds Rhinos Foundation staff and they have never flinched in us asking the Rhinos to help us with that group of people in the city.
“It makes a massive difference and it is fundamental to the future of the city and what we are trying to achieve.”
The charity was further recognised at the recent Leeds Child Friendly Leeds awards, where they picked up the honour of Best Overall Contribution.
Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s General Manager, Davide Longo, said the charity were proud to receive these accolades and remained focused on helping deliver positive changes to the city. Commenting on winning the award Longo said:
"Leeds Rhinos Foundation is committed to making Leeds the best city for children and young people to grow up in, to study, work and play. Our mantra of changing lives through sport through projects such as TryZone and the Rugby League Development Plan for Leeds demonstrates our promise and support to the vision of Child Friendly Leeds. We were delighted to receive the award for biggest overall contribution and we will continue to strive for excellence across all areas of our work.”