What started as a wheelie bin and some tins of food in Liverpool has become a national phenomenon
Fans Supporting Foodbanks co-founders Robert Daniels and Dave Kelly ( (Photo: Chris Neill Daily Mirror))
A group of Merseyside football fans who set out to combat food poverty and ended up creating a powerful national network have been nominated for a Pride of Britain award. The Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain Awards have been honouring the nation’s unsung heroes since 1999.
Hosted by Carol Vorderman and Ashley Banjo and shown on prime time ITV, the awards – which are sponsored by P&O Cruises- celebrate ordinary people from all walks of life who go out of their way to help others. This year, a group of football fans in Liverpool will be amongst those being celebrated.
That’s because the Fans Supporting Foodbanks organisation has been nominated for a Pride of Britain Award 2025. Many in Liverpool will be aware of the work of the group, who started out in their mission to fight food poverty by collecting items of food in a wheelie bin before Liverpool and Everton match days back in 2015 – but have now built up a national network of fan-based food collection organisations.
The organisation was co-founded by three friends, Everton supporters Dave Kelly and Robbie Daniels and Liverpool fan Ian Byrne, who is now the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool West Derby.
Speaking about the group’s humble beginnings, Dave said: “On a damp Saturday morning, we stupidly stood outside Goodison Park with a wheelie bin in October 2015 and attempted to collect food and used the contacts we had in the football community. Our first collection in a wheelie bin was the first small acorn and it has grown exponentially, far bigger and greater than we ever envisioned.”
He added: “For the whole of the campaign it has always been run using the strapline and the hashtag on social media of ‘hunger doesn’t wear club colours’, which is really important to us. The purple t-shirt is quite deliberate really, it’s not red or it’s not blue, it’s red and blue mixed together.
“And we believe here on Merseyside that two football clubs and the fans association, with the two clubs, our unique selling point we believed would be that we could probably be the only city where the supporters of both clubs worked together collectively for the greater community.”
After those first collections in a wheelie bin, Fans Supporting Foodbanks has expanded exponentially both here in Liverpool and around the country. The organisation now supplies a quarter of all donations to Liverpool Foodbanks and has partner groups involving other football clubs and their fans across the country.
Dave added: “The sixth richest economy in the world shouldn’t have people who are reliant on foodbanks, but I think one of the great things about this (Fans Supporting Foodbanks) is that none of us are judgemental, we don’t judge anybody, we treat everybody as an equal, engage with them as equals, and I think that’s really important.”
Fans Supporting Foodbanks co-founder, Ian Byrne MP with Liverpool FC CEO Billy Hogan (Photo: Chris Neill Daily Mirror)
“I’ll often say to people that ‘you don’t know if the kid next door, or the pensioner living on the corner of your street is going hungry, you don’t know if they ate a meal yesterday, you don’t know whether they went to bed last night hungry, we know people are.”
Robert Daniels added: “Ten years ago, myself, Dave Kelly and Ian Byrne, we were into football activism and we decided we wanted to show football fans in a better light, so we decided to try and do something to alleviate food poverty in our city.
“40-50,000 fans attend a match every weekend so we decided that if we can get them match-going fans to all donate one item it will go a long way to alleviating food poverty in the city. “
Fans Supporting Foodbanks has been strongly backed by both Liverpool FC and Everton FC. Billy Hogan, chief executive officer at Liverpool Football Club said: “It’s an incredible story, from working together with the Everton supporters and the Liverpool supporters.
“It’s unfortunately obvious that we need to do it, because the fact that we have foodbanks means that people aren’t getting enough to eat, but I think it is something that is another great example of the power of football and the power of communities and it’s something that we certainly are very involved with the stand here (Fans Supporting Foodbanks stall) around every match day here at Liverpool and at Anfield.
“It’s incredibly well supported by our supporters and I think it’s a credit to teams around the country because as you know there is now Fans Supporting Foodbanks all around the UK.”
“I think it goes back again to that point around community, that of course there is rivalry, and there’s a lot of tension on the pitch, but off the pitch it’s about supporting those in need and supporting each other and I think that’s something that certainly this idea having come from the supporters and having now spread around the country is a great example of people being focused on helping each other. The rivalries can stay on the pitch, but off the pitch it’s something we are really supporting in communities.”
The Pride of Britain Awards nominations close on August 10. People can continue to nominate Fans Supporting Foodbanks or any other unsung heroes in their communities until that date, details of how to nominate are here.