Good afternoon, gentlemen!
Hi, Jürgen.
- Good afternoon, Jürgen. - How are you?
Good to see you.
Who is the Everton fan on this call?
Ah.
I've grown a beard and put my glasses on so I look like you, mate.
Jürgen, it all started, I'm a head teacher in a school over in Wavertree,
I run an engineering specialist school.
I noticed on social media that a lot of schools around the country
were starting to make PPE,
because there was just such a need for hospitals across the country,
so we went and made about 100 PPE visors that night.
Within seconds they had been snapped up by nurses,
nurses coming to our homes to pick them up after shifts,
crying, saying they had no PPE, throwing money at us saying, 'Thank you so much.'
But the need was getting that great that we just couldn't cope,
and that's when Fans Supporting Foodbanks and Ian and Dave became involved,
in terms of really needing to make this a big project,
and that's where Merseyside PPE Hub was born.
Our role in it was really putting rocket boosters under it, wasn't it, John?
With regards to giving it profile.
We come together, like we always do,
so when we come together fighting food poverty,
this time we've come together on the role of PPE,
but the overarching thing is football fans once again working within society
to come together, collectively.
We've manufactured, as a group, 48,000 PPE visors.
The discussions we had early days, there was people talking about charity -
it's not charity, it's solidarity,
it's what working-class communities do, they come together,
and that's what makes this city the special city it is,
because, in times of adversity, we do come together.
Incredible. How many people were involved in this process?
Across the whole hub there's probably about 50, 60 people involved.
50/60 people produced 48,000? Unbelievable.
Just people pulling together to do things like delivering, Jürgen,
they're the unsung heroes.
People turning up at the door saying, "Right, where am I taking these deliveries to?
"I'll go and deliver to 15 care homes today.
People driving around the country to get materials.
It's unbelievable, and it's thanks to them as well.
Everton-Liverpool, it's an interesting thing
because you would say they cannot come together
but you see, in the most important things, they come together easily.
And thanks to you for that. Showing the best in us, showing the best of the game,
it's about the game and about solidarity and about togetherness.
I couldn't thank you more.
There's far more that unites us than divides us,
so that's the message we're promoting all the time.
We're incredibly proud of the fact that we've built the whole concept
of what Fans Supporting Foodbanks is, and it's not been tribal.
SIREN BLARES ON PHONE
Sorry about that.
That was his Z-Cars ringtone!
Sorry!
We've got a big role and play a big part in what goes in our local communities,
it's about collaboration, it's about tapping into
probably one of the biggest resources available in this city.
Most of us are season ticket holders, whether it's Liverpool or Everton,
and we were missing football, so this has really helped us, pulling together,
the solidarity tour all around the country
to meet other football fans really helped our mental state moving forward.
So we're proud of what we've done
and the thanks we've had from people around the city has been unbelievable.
Life is not always fair, I would say, or most of the time not fair,
but we deal with it, and without people like you it would be much more difficult
to deal with all the things that happen out there.
Wherever we can help as a club, me as a person,
players, stuff like this, we are open.
Our life is not normal, we know that,
so we need people who give us the right information
on where we can do something for the community,
because we all live here and we want to have this area be as good a place as possible.
That's, for me, the most important thing of this talk today.
Thank you very much for all that you have done and for all that you've said,
and send to my regards to all the people out there who are involved in that.
Thank you.
Was a pleasure, gentlemen.
Nice one, thanks very much.