Aston Athletics Basketball Club, the ccommunity arm of Birmingham A's receives £296,545 from the Reaching Communites Fund to continue its Hoops4Health project which provides a healthy living educational programme with professional sporting role models to children in primary schools. The club will use basketball as an activity to convey positive health messages, such as the importance of physical exercise and eating healthily. The project aims to expand in order to improve young people's employment opportunities through employment skills training, providing support in gaining qualifications and gaining work experience through volunteering.

Nigel Hanson of Birimingham A's said:  with a total project budget of £770,000.00 "Hoops4Health’s importance lies in the opportunity to create a lasting social legacy through the use of basketball for social change over the next five years. Hoops4Health will educate 10,000 children whilst developing 50 new grass roots basketball clubs that will use basketball, health education and fun as a catalyst for social change. The project aims to provide better opportunities to children, young people and adults living in some of Birmingham's and the wider region's most deprived areas.”

The project will encourage young people to look at how their lifestyle choices affect their health in both the long term and short term. It will promote healthy living issues such as nutrition, smoking cessation, and the importance of keeping fit and its link to a healthy heart.

It will also provide an introduction to basketball as a healthy sporting activity, promoting sport as a diversionary activity, keeping young people positively engaged and keeping them off the streets. Finally, the long term unemployed are supported back into the work place through volunteer placements or accredited training courses.