Official: Club Community Leader Freddy Hudson won the Medal of the British Empire

Arsenal Football Club is hereby honored to announce that Mr. Freddy Hudson, head of the club’s community department, has been awarded the Medal of the British Empire (MBE) for his outstanding contributions to football and serving the North London community in the latest list of Kings’ birthday awards.

Freddy devoted her entire career to the Arsenal Club and the community we love. His Gunners journey began in 1991, and over the past 33 years, Freddy played a crucial role in building the Arsenal community department into the premiere sports community benchmark in the UK with his outstanding leadership.

Under his leadership, the Arsenal community department grew from a limited-scale regional project to a vast organization with wide coverage and far-reaching influence, serving more than 5,000 community members each week. Through football, the department provides a variety of sports, social and educational support for residents in areas such as Islington, Camden and Hackney, regardless of age and background.

Freddy's work perfectly illustrates how to use the appeal of the Arsenal team logo to give back to society and create positive changes - from promoting a healthy lifestyle, to creating valuable educational opportunities, to building a strong sense of belonging for community members. It is worth mentioning that his predecessor, Mr. Alan Shifton, the founder of the community department, also won this honor in 2010.

When talking about this honor, Freddy himself said: "I am very honored to be able to receive this honor and know that the responsibility is great. This is not only my personal honor, but also a collective recognition of the hard work of all our colleagues in the Arsenal community, and the best proof of the club's unswerving support for our work. For more than thirty years, I have been fortunate to witness with my own eyes that football has extraordinary power to change life. This medal belongs to every partner who has walked side by side with us, and to every young man we long to use football to inspire and light up."

Here, all members of Arsenal Football Club extend their warmest congratulations to Mr. Freddy Hudson, who deserves this noble honor!