Senior Foundation Coach, Becks Toan, has more reason than most to speak of the difference our charity can make: She has experienced it herself.

"The Foundation means everything to me,” she said. “I don’t like to think about where I would be without it.”

Becks, who lives in Frome, had been trying – and struggling – to find a route into a sporting career, with long-held ambition of being a coach.

She was unemployed and “at rock bottom”.

“I was pretty broken,” she said.

Having grown up a fan of the round ball – and Liverpool FC in particular – Becks developed an affection for Bath Rugby and it was while looking at the club website that she spotted an advert for an apprenticeship with Bath Rugby Foundation.

After an unsuccessful application for the role, Becks stayed in touch with the Foundation team and started volunteering, helping at events and gaining some coaching experience.

She enrolled on the Get Active Into Work employability programme. This programme for unemployed people aged 16 and over developed sports leadership and provided work experience where she gained sport leadership experience and gained a Community Sports Leaders Award Level 2.

In time this turned into some part time work and then, when the Foundation teamed up with Bath and North East Somerset Council on the Try Active programme, Becks secured a full time coaching role.

When the programme’s funding ended, Becks was successful in gaining a permanent contract as a Foundation Coach specialising in Inclusion delivery.

Now a Senior Foundation Coach, Becks is focused on helping others as a coach and knows the impact that Bath Rugby Foundation has had on her own life.

“I was like a broken-down car when I met the Foundation,” she said. “Bath Rugby Foundation fixed me. “It means the world to me that someone believed in me.”

In April, when the Bath Rugby squad ran out at The Clash they did so with images of 15 inspiring Foundation individuals on their shirts – including Becks.

From unemployment and feeling like she was “at rock bottom” in 2012, Becks was named the city’s Coach of the Year at the Bath Chronicle Sports Awards in 2017 and used her acceptance speech to thank the Foundation.

“The Foundation means everything to me. I wouldn’t be in the position I am without it,” she said. “I don’t like to think about where I would be without it.”