Today marks the beginning of a week-long celebration for Reach’s Birthday it also coincides with Women in Sport Week. We will be celebrating this occasion with activity across our various channels all week.
Reach, created by Sports Coach UK, supports women in coaching. Since its launch in October last year, the campaign has seen over 130 different organisations signing up to show their support and get involved. These organisations include county sports partnerships (CSPs), governing bodies of sport, universities and colleges as well as local sports clubs and physical activity groups.
Over the past year, seven programmes supported by Reach have been delivered by CSPs to get more women involved in coaching. Funded by Sport England, the projects were invited to explore new and innovative approaches to attracting participants not currently involved in exercise or sport.
Between October 2015 and March 2016 13 CSPs provided opportunities to more than 300 women to lead physical activity within their local community. This has led to hundreds of women, many of them previously inactive, getting off their sofas and getting more active.
Lancashire Sport delivered one of these projects, a Body Fit programme run through Lancashire Women’s Centres, which provide counselling, confidence-building and employment support to women in the county. Many of the women engaged in the sessions have experienced issues such as domestic abuse, problems with alcohol or low self-esteem.
Project Lead, Jayne Wilson said:
“We have been over-whelmed by the impact which this programme has had amongst women who have become our Bodyfit Leaders, volunteers and participants. Feedback has been so positive around improved levels of confidence and self-esteem which are helping women to access training, preparing for work and wider employment opportunities.
The Bodyfit programme is grateful for the support shown by Reach in helping us share our development ideas with other similar projects. We hope that the learning from our project being shared through Reach will benefit new projects developed to encourage and support more women in coaching.”
Sarah Milner, Inclusion and Diversity Lead at sports coach UK said:
“The profile of women in sport and coaching has never been higher – from Government to local community level. It is a privilege to be able to celebrate all those great women coaches out there and work with some very pro-active organisations who deliver sport and physical activity around the UK. We certainly have achieved a great deal by raising awareness of the work that needs to be done and hope to build on this positivity in the forthcoming year. Watch this space!”
Throughout Reach’s birthday and Women in Sport week we will be sharing a host of online activity including a daily blog on our findings from the funded projects and a daily vlog that follows a week in the life of Karen Atkinson MBE, mum, wife and netball coach.
Whether you are thinking about coaching for the first time or want to improve your current coaching practices, Reach can support you. !