Mitalee's History

The Bury Park area of Luton consists of Biscot & Dallow Wards. The community living in these wards are amongst those known to face multiple of deprivation and social exclusion.  They are likely to suffer ill health, live in poor housing and low incomes, and be victim of crime, discrimination and anti social behaviour.  

Bury Park area of Luton does offer very little or in some cases no green spaces for young people to play. It also provide very little recreational or sports facilities or meeting places.  

In April 1984 with the support of Luton Town Football Club a group of young people came together and establish Mitalee Youth Association with a view to address social exclusion faced by them and other young people in the neighbourhood. Luton Town Football Club provided the group with access to a porta cabin and usage of the car park with flood lit facilities to promote football coaching and other indoor/ outdoor social & recreational activities.  

Within a year of the inception of the group it developed 5 football teams, each team consisting of average 20 players of various ages and backgrounds and set up its own summer football league.

During late 80s and early 90s Mitalee played in the local Chiltern Youth League and South Beds football league. Mitalee under 16-football team was the first Asian team to enter and play in the Chiltern Youth League.   Sports activities were considered as a key tool to engage young people and address issues such as drugs, crime, boredom, community cohesion etc.  

Again, during late 80s and early 90s Mitalee’s youth and adult teams played in many local, national and international football competitions including the Dana Cup in Denmark, Brothers Union cup in Bangladesh and Hatter cup at Kenilworth Road.   Besides competitions Mitalee also played friendly matches all over the country from Cardiff to Newcastle, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Essex, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Kent etc.  

In 1986 Mitalee moved into Luton Youth House, which is a large purpose build Youth Club and started a Youth Drop-in session.   In 1989 Youth Service recognised the contribution of Mitalee and offered a service level agreement and provided with part time paid workers.   With the support of the part time paid workers in 1989 Mitalee opened its first fulltime Youth drop in facilities on Oak Road, close to Luton Town Football club.  

In 1990 Mitalee was the first organisation from Luton to organise a youth exchange trip to Bangladesh. Young people from the group raised over £10,000- through a range of fund raising endeavours and created opportunities for 13 young people from the socio-economic disadvantaged backgrounds to travel to Bangladesh. Highlight of the trip was that the group played nine football matches with local teams, including a football match with the British High Commission team at the National Stadium.   From early 90s Mitalee begun to change its emphasis from a sports oriented organisation and began to put more emphasis into youth & community development works