FAREPlay Stepford, formerly Stepford Sports Park, is now home to state-of-the-art facilities including two full-sized 4G football pitches, converted from two smaller grass pitches, and five 5-aside pitches with new floodlights and fencing. Operated by Easterhouse social enterprise FARE Scotland, the centre is designed to be a social and leisure hub for people in the community.

To help finance the upgrade works, a £1.6 million funding package was secured through Scotland’s leading responsible finance provider Social Investment Scotland (SIS). FARE was also supported by consultants from Sports Labs who advised on technical aspects of the pitch construction, with work carried out by Sportex.

In 2021, FARE secured a lease from Glasgow Life for the site as part of the People Make Glasgow project, which gave community groups and entrepreneurs an opportunity to take over council venues.

FAREPlay’s Stepford facility will help the charity to realise its mission of supporting people to have an active lifestyle, regardless of age, circumstance or ability. The organisation provides opportunities for children, young people and adults to play, exercise, develop, and socialise.

As well as providing access to sports facilities for a range of community groups and teams – including nearby Easterhouse Academy – the centre will also be used to deliver FARE’s employability programmes including schemes focused on getting young people into work in the sport and leisure and hospitality sectors.

Jimmy Wilson, CEO of FARE, said: “Our new FAREPlay facility at Edinburgh Road will help us to reach even more people in the local community and encourage them to live a healthy and active life through sport and exercise. It will also play a big role in our employment and training programmes, providing valuable opportunities for 16-24 year olds.

“While it offers much more than just football pitches, we’ve taken great care to create top-class facilities. The new 4G pitch, for instance, will be much more useful and accessible than a traditional grass pitch, which can be tricky to maintain with our wet Scottish weather. Ultimately, we want to promote wellbeing by increasing the number of local people participating in sport and physical activity, and FAREPlay Stepford will help us with the tools to make that happen.”

Chris Jamieson, head of investments at SIS, added: “SIS prides itself on backing local community organisations and social enterprises of all sizes to enhance wealth in communities and improve lives. FARE Scotland does just that, playing an important role for the local community, particularly young people.

“It’s a great example of how one social enterprise can deliver multiple social and economic impacts, from opportunities for career development to its focus on physical health and mental wellbeing. The improvements made to the Stepford facility through this building programme will help it deliver even more benefits to even more people from neighbouring communities. We’re excited to see the results.”

Councillor Ruairi Kelly added: “This is a fantastic example of community empowerment leading to much improved facilities and services for people locally and supporting employment and training opportunities for young people in the community. The pandemic forced us to think about and do things differently to get services back up and running and this was one of the pilot projects. FARE and Easterhouse FA should be very proud of what they have achieved and can act as role models for other organisations looking to have a bigger stake in the management of community assets.”

Daniel Cameron, founder of Easterhouse Football Academy, said: “It fills our hearts with pride to see what FARE has achieved at Stepford with Easterhouse FA playing a small part in that. The Easterhouse community and beyond now has a football centre that rivals professional clubs and, hopefully, we may see the next Scottish footballing superstar start their journey here. This is a fantastic venue that we all can call home for years to come.”