I’m not a big football fan myself but I am fascinated by the way fans get worked up when their team is playing. It is obvious the adrenaline is flowing, and it flows even more intensely when national sides are playing because national pride is also at stake.
As the Official Partner of UEFA EURO 2024, Lidl Cyprus decided to celebrate by offering the once-in-a-life-time experience of attending a EURO 2024 match to 11 children and their families. All expenses were taken care of by Lidl Cyprus.
On the one hand, the initiative exemplifies Lidl’s wide range of actions which hold the well-being of its customers at heart. Indeed, if you look deeper into Lidl Cyrus’ social responsibility initiatives, you’ll notice that Lidl isn’t just about offering competitive prices for cost effective, environmentally friendly and fresh locally-sourced grocery shopping. It’s also about giving children and their families access to one of the biggest football tournaments in the world, thus illustrating Lidl’s broad interest in all strata of society.
And so, 11 children from Cyprus, accompanied by their parents and chaperones, flew to Germany to watch the Netherlands-Romania match. As part of the Lidl Kids Team programme, Lidl Cyprus, along with Lidl in other countries, enabled children from all over Europe to take pride of place and be part of a football team-sized local squad, to represent their region as official Player Escorts. In essence, this meant that 11 children between the ages of 6 and 10 wearing their Lidl Kids Team badges, accompanied their football heroes onto the pitch. As a family but also as a team of over 70 Player Escorts from other European countries, these children stood proudly during the rendition of the national anthems of the two countries. They then watched the match, enchanted by the magical atmosphere in the Munich stadium.
It’s needless to say that the children who chose to enter the prize-draw style competition to enter the Lidl Kidz Programme to attend this year’s UEFA EURO matches were all keen to go. Lidl Cyprus certainly made sure their dream would come true, and didn’t limit it’s offering to the euphoria on the pitch. Their win offered them two nights’ accommodation in Munich with rich amenities, welcome gifts, tickets for matches, transfers, meals and city tours. Making sure the trip to Germany was an entertaining as well as an educational one, the programme also included recreational and creative activities that were organised during their free time.
Like many of Lidl Cyprus’ online competitions, the lucky winners of the Lidl Kids Team Cypriot mission were selected through the UEFA EURO 2024TM: Lidl Kids Team competition on the Lidl Plus app that ran from March 7 to May 1, 2024. Competitions held by the company and through the app ensure that once selected through the prize-draw style competition, participation in the programme is carried out without exclusions, without exceptions, with absolute respect for the diversity, personality and needs of every person, whether young or old.
I would be interested in hearing what the children themselves have to say about their experience and what it meant to them to wear their badge with the ‘We’re on your team’ slogan in which the word ‘your’ defines the unique experience they where given.
I’d also like to know if any of them, or the family members that accompanied them, had already had the opportunity to travel to Munich and what that meant to them.
But what’s for certain is that Lidl Cyprus doesn’t just take care of our grocery shopping. The more I see of what Lidl strives to do for the community in which it operates, the more I realise how important it is for big companies to take their social responsibilities seriously. It is reassuring to see Lidl Cyprus set such a good example.
