“I was privileged. These kids don’t have a choice.”
Patrick Bamford has donated £5,000 to a local primary school in Leeds to help children access remote learning resources during the third national lockdown.
The money was sent to Beeston Primary School, near Elland Road, and was put towards sourcing tablets to enable children to continue learning from home while the classrooms remain shut.
The Leeds United player told talkSPORT that hearing Brighton and Hove Albion CEO Paul Barber discuss the club’s £25,000 donation to local schools for the same reason inspired Bamford to help his local community.
Barber mentioned that Brighton decided to donate after hearing of a single mother trying to homeschool four children with just one laptop, a struggle that encouraged Bamford to check his privilege and do his part to help out those less well-off than him.
“I’ve always liked to help out with the community stuff that every club does, I’ve always liked to help the kids,” Bamford told talkSPORT Breakfast host Laura Woods on Monday.
“With the pandemic it’s not been possible to go out to schools; I’ve done Zoom calls and things like that.
“But when this most recent lockdown was announced, I was in the car on the way home listening to the radio, I think it was talkSPORT actually.
“When I got home I was scrolling through Twitter and saw that kids were struggling and some kids around Leeds weren’t going to be able to have a proper education during lockdown because of their circumstances.
“It made me think, I was privileged through no choice of my own with my mum and dad putting me through a private education, but kids don’t actually have a choice over what education they get, so they’re kind of left out to dry and it’s not their fault.
“I wanted to try and help as much as I could, so I spoke to the media guys at Leeds and we had a chat about Beeston school, who I’ve worked with before.
“I spoke to the headmistress on Zoom and just asked her, ‘what can I do to help?’
“I offered to teach some classes on Zoom, but we just ended up doing a few messages instead.
“So we’re going to help them out in any way we can down the road.
“It was just something that felt right to do.”
