The fourth European Football Development Network (EFDN) conference came to Manchester on 23rd and 24th March and was hosted in the auspicious surroundings of the Theatre of Dreams.

The EFDN supports community foundations and CSR programmes in football clubs across Europe to share learning, best practice, tools, techniques and programme design. Its main objective is to improve the practice and strengthen the voice of the sector as a whole.

Focusing on the theme of health and wellbeing and the contribution football can make to these social outcomes, the event welcomed the highest number of delegates to date and featured speakers from UEFA, Healthy Stadia, Manchester United Foundation, as well as Substance’s Tim Crabbe.

Alongside Lauren Ford, Manchester United Foundation’s Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Tim discussed how knowing your goals and understanding the critical pathway for achieving these goals (from recruitment to delivery to progression routes) was critical to successful programme design and effective monitoring and evaluation.

Other interesting contributions came from KAA Gent, who shared the success of their Fans Cycling programme and Albion in the Community, who shared their Fan for Life toolkit, developed in partnership with Prostate Cancer UK.

To find out more about the European Football Development Network, click on this link: http://www.efdn.org/conference.php