Mezzle Joins the Elena Baltacha Foundation As A Key Sponsor

News and Stories by Nino Severino

Life paths have an extraordinary way of crossing and leading to the start of great friendships and journeys, this is exactly what has happened to Mel Kang and myself.

We were both invited to talk at a business networking event, Mel to present on Mezzle and his passion for sport and community support, I attended to talk about Elena Baltacha-Severino and her life and legacy.

After the event had finished and we were both leaving we just happened to walk past each other, it was a real ‘Sliding Doors’ moment, Mel could have easily walked out of another exit, and I could have stayed to chat to someone else. As we passed, I commented on Mel’s presentation, and within a minute we were deep into a tennis conversation.

The more we talked, the more I got to realise how passionate Mel was about tennis, but more importantly, how much he wanted to affect tennis participation in the community, particularly children. This led me on to telling him all about the tennis programme The Elena Baltacha Foundation delivers in Ipswich, and across our London network.

We talked for around half an hour, at the end we both promised we would stay in contact with each other and arrange a dinner to continue the conversation. We both stayed true to our word and arranged a wonderful dinner a few months later. During this dinner we talked a lot about The Elena Baltacha Foundation, about Elena, and her passion for wanting to help children who went to schools in challenging areas. I could instantly tell, this was making Mel think, and he was kind enough to express his thoughts.

He told me about his life as a child, and how he grew to love tennis, but was not fortunate enough to have the normal privilege of private lessons and all the other support that is needed to climb the tennis pathway. From what Mel was telling me, I knew his journey through tennis was the tough route. He expressed how he would love to support us, providing tennis opportunity to children across all social spectrums, giving every child the to play our wonderful game. After the dinner, we promised again to continue the discussion, to find a way of working together, to have a bigger impact on your children’s lives, through tennis.

Again, we both stayed true to this commitment, Mel invited me to his London office to discuss the possibilities, and how, as CEO of Mezzle, he could help us to increase the impact on primary children’s lives through our Tennis Road Show Programmes.

The meeting at Mezzle’s London Office lasted for hours, we discussed the many ways we thought that both Mezzle and The Elena Baltacha Foundation could work together. This was not a difficult conversation, Mel is passionate about tennis, and wants to make a difference in the community, in Ipswich, and in London. This fits perfectly with our charitable objectives and moved us to a plan that now sees us working very closely together to achieve our goals across multiple communities.

I also told Mel about our personal development programme for senior students, our SS4B Personal development Programme. He loved it, and went further with his support, offering and massive amount of support through the Mezzle group of offices. We have made a number of trips back to the London office to discuss how Mezzle could have an incredible affect of the SS4B programme we offer.

It was very clear to see Mel’s commitment to our objectives, we discussed how Mezzle could play a crucial part in our programme, after a very long discussion we arrived at a very structured plan. Our students want real life work experience, Mezzle have a number of offices, in Ipswich, London and other towns and cities. Mel offered us, his company as an exciting opportunity for our young athlete students to experience high quality work environments. 

His team were amazing, very attentive, and could have not offered any more to begin to develop the foundations of a powerful SS4B relationships between The Elena Baltacha Foundation and Mezzle. I am super excited for our Athlete Students, who I know will gain from the support of Mel, his team and Mezzle the company.

The future is very exciting, and I cannot wait to see where this very special relationship will lead us all.