Villa's Community Department focuses on three major areas - football development, education and social inclusion.

Headed up by Duncan Riddle (pictured) and assisted by football development officer Joe Hunt, Alan Thomason, Nigel Macrow and 18 qualified coaches, the department goes from strength to strength.

A major new area is 'Playing the Villa Way' where the club's team of highly qualified community coaches visit schools across the area to teach children about the game and develop their skills.

Being part of the 'Play the Villa Way' is free but you need to register, with a host of benefits available if you do sign up to the groundbreaking scheme.

If we aren't coaching kids, we are teaching them about the benefits of healthy living or providing them with essential life skills.

We run soccer schools and clinics and educate kids about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle via our Villa Vitality programme.

As well as that, we also provide coaching to special needs children and boast our very own electric wheelchair side, the Villa Rockets.

Villa are also running a Kickz project in a bid to reduce anti-social behaviour among 13-18-year-olds in Aston.

Schools, charity organisations and clubs often look for donations from the Community Department to help with fundraising, raffles and general good causes. In this section of the website, we have a charity donation policy that spells out our strategy.

Martin O'Neill is fully supportive of the Community Department's work.

He said: "Many people still feel that football clubs are limited to the affairs of the first team. While this is obviously very important, we believe there is much more to Aston Villa than just attempting to win Premier League matches.

"We have coaches who are teaching children in the community about the game. The aim is two fold - to get the youngsters interested in playing and then to improve their skills.

"This, in turn, may help with the social skills of these children, mixing, as they will be, with other children.

"Anyway, it is great to see children from the local area playing more football and having more fun."