On 22nd May we will deliver our first ever live sports experience in partnership with Leeds Rhinos Foundation. The experience is for local children to participate as flag bearers for the Leeds Rhinos vs Huddersfield Giants Rugby League match. 

This will include the children being up close to the stars as they take to the field infront of 15,000+ fans. 

The hope is that the experience inspires the children to be able to allow them to dream of making it to the professional sports stage eithwer as a player or working for a club.

Alongside our girls participation project we also want to allow children with disabilities to participate in sport, again in a relaxed and non-judgemental setting. 

We have delivered SportABILITY as a 3 week intervention, completely free to schools to allow their children who have and EHCP or visable disability to take part in disability sports, allowing them to play freely and not feel as though they cannot access. 

The project ends with a the children receiving a number of contacts to local sports groups where they can go on to participate in sport at a variety of levels. 

This year we have run a trial study to see how Girls Participation can be affected by different factors, to name but a few; enjoyment and comfort. 

The outcome of the Play2EmpowHER study found that girls are much more likely to continue with sports participation throughout their later years in Primary School (Y4 upwards is where we tend to find a drop in female participation) if they have the ability to participate in a comfortable environment where they are not subjected to peers making them feel as though they aren't good enough to play. We also found that girls were happy to play in an environment where they are allowed to be themselves reducing body image issues. 

As part of our aim to increase participation rates of children and young people who may have experienced challenging circumstances, we are pleased to say with have provided over 30 places at our holiday camps so far. In return for schools displaying a Sporting Influence banner, they receive 10 free places at camp. Six schools have now used a portion of the places, providing opportunities for sports and social engagement. These free places provided to children have increased sports participation by approx. 150 hours in total. In addition, it has allowed the foundation to build great relationships with families and help to provide further opportunities in the future. Whilst at camp these children have engaged in a variety of different sports, ranging from dodgeball and cricket to swimming and a camp favourite 'hula hut throw down'. Most importantly, these children have engaged with other young people in a fun, safe and professional environment.

So far, we have had great success in engaging stakeholders and building partners, and in addition we have now worked with six schools to promote participation at camp through free places. We are also excited to say that our application for funding through the FEAST project has been successful. Therefore in the summer holidays we aim to create opportunities for approximately 50 pupils which will take our total opportunities provided to 187, with the aim of breaking the 200 barrier by the end of summer! Fingers crossed.

All round health whether that be mental, physical and emotional is at the heart of everything we do. Founder David Moss has always believed in the importance of young people developing their social skills through sport. We have a key focus on promoting positive Body language, Communication, Determination Encouragement and Respect. Led by the foundation all staff took part in promoting Children’s Mental Health week when teaching in our 35 schools. Each day of week focused on one social skill and how it will help improve the mental health of our selves and others around us. Additionally, we asked schools to swap a piece of PE kit that day for something green (our foundation colour). We had a fun week and schools really got involved, see the below pictures for some of the highlights!