Sporting Equals has been funded to deliver a four-year project with The Sweaty Betty Foundation to deliver a city-based model that supports ethnically diverse women and girls engaging in sport and movement, and research to help the sector better understand the barriers that ethnically diverse women and girls face when accessing sporting opportunities. This project was undertaken by Sporting Equals, and funded by The Sweaty Betty Foundation.
The challenge
The challenges include gender play gap and drop off rate in physically activity for teenage girls, and accessible clothing and access to female-only safe spaces for women and girls of ethnically diverse backgrounds. There is also a lack of sports coaches for ethnically diverse women and girls to be coached by, and aspire to be.
The solution
Creating a model to:
- Support grassroots organisations in direct delivery to create safe spaces for girls to engage in physical activity.
- Access organisational capacity building workshops to empower grassroots organisations to become sustainable and financially secure.
- Provide workshops and coaching courses for women and girls to step up and become sports coaches and future leaders in sport.
- Work with a sports brand to design and create accessible clothing for ethnically diverse women and girls.
- Create opportunities for the women and girls to step into storytelling roles to share their journeys through the programme – content creation campaign.
The impact
- 51 ethically diverse young female coaches trained and supported through coaching placements.
- 832 girls regularly engaged in a diverse range of sports, including skiing, archery, football, cricket, mountain biking, squash, netball.
- Nine women female community leaders supported to take up leadership and decision-making roles in civil society or government.
- An effective and sustainable delivery model that can be transferred to another city.
How is the new approach being sustained?
The 10 grassroots community clubs have received an organisational capacity-building support programme as part of this programme to ensure that they can continue to deliver this project as a collective once funding of the project finishes.
Lessons learned
There are several lessons learned, around grassroots engagement of women and girls, and also capacity building organisations. Please let me know what area of focus you would like information on.
Contact information
Gemma Parry, Partnership Manager: [email protected]