Empire Fighting Chance was never meant to be a charity. It was born on the streets of Bristol when two friends did, what they thought, was their good deed for the day. Now, the Empire team have been doing good deeds everyday since 2006. 

In a few words, Empire Fighting Chance fights the destructive impact of poverty and inequality on the lives of young people through non-contact boxing and intensive personal support.

Martin and Jamie are too humble to brag. So I'll do it for them - this is their story in my words. 

Martin and Jamie were friends who boxed and trained together at Empire Boxing - a club that has produced British, Commonwealth, European and World Champions. 

One evening on the way back from work, they saw a young lad, sat on the side of the road throwing stones at a car. He was bored. By way of convincing him to stop, they decided to let him join their boxing session that evening. They trained, had a chat with him and said goodbye thinking no more of it. 

The next week, there were 4 young people were waiting outside the gym wanting to train with Martin and Jamie. The next week, there were 10. And within 6 weeks, there were 50.

 Soon, Martin and Jamie were getting calls from the police asking them to train other young people who were in trouble. Then schools started getting in touch asking if there was ‘space’ to send some of their more challenging students on the verge of exclusion. Before long, training this many young people and holding down a full time job  became unsustainable. Something had to be done. 

Empire Fighting Chance was born. The aim was  to “give as many people as possible a fighting chance to succeed”. 

Today, EFC is no longer just non contact boxing. Empire have a multi-disciplinary team of coaches, therapists and mentors. They deliver four psychologically informed non-contact boxing programmes, reaching over 5,000 young people every year.

Martin and Jamie's 'one good deed' evolved from a small boxing project to running the UK’s largest non-contact boxing schools engagement programme. 

And it works. The numbers support this but the most powerful thing I can share, are the stories from the young people EFC have supported, given voices to and transformed the lives of.