Laying the Foundation

United’s 2007 Asia Tour will give Sir Alex Ferguson and his players the opportunity to visit some overseas community programmes supported by the Manchester United Foundation.

The Foundation, which was launched in March 2006 as part of the celebrations to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Busby Babes’ first league title, has a clear vision to educate, motivate and inspire future generations to build better communities for all.

This vision will provide the focus during a number of community visits on the tour, the first of which will be to the paediatric cancer ward in Tokyo. At the same time, another group of players will make the trip to a local school for the blind which has been organised by the club’s principal sponsor AIG.

Following the team’s arrival in Korea, a number of the players will visit a local orphanage in Seoul. The Reds then head to Macau where a group will meet youngsters at another local orphanage.

United’s final stop on the tour will be Guangzhou. During their stay in China, the travelling party will witness a UNICEF-supported project firsthand to learn more about how HIV/AIDS is affecting young people as part of the club’s support for the charity’s global campaign ‘United for Children, Unite against AIDS.’

Ahead of their Far East trip, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ji-sung Park and Dong Fangzhuo recorded special messages about the disease in English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. These will be broadcast in the stadiums at each match and on television across Asia to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.

Future community visits will continue to be an integral part of the pre-season tour programme as the club looks to lend its support across the globe.

“We recognise that the Manchester United name is a worldwide one and there is an international community that we can serve,” says Foundation Chief Executive Trish Hirst. “The pre-season tours will help us to do that and we’ll be looking to involve ourselves in a range of overseas football and community projects. Our partnership with UNICEF is obviously key to that but we’re also looking at other projects in which we can invest.”