Six London Youth members receive funding to get active
28 February 2018
On 20th February 2018 we held our ActiveLeads pitch event at House of Sport, kindly supported by London Sport. This sport-focussed social action programme gives groups of five female leaders aged 14 – 18 the opportunity to develop and deliver a project for young people in their area.
The programme is in its first year and currently runs in six youth organisations across London. With evidence showing a connection between a lack of physical activity, poor health and low aspiration, this is an important way to ensure young women in London are given the opportunity to take on leadership roles while getting active.
In January the leaders came on a residential to Hindleap Warren, one of London Youth’s residential centres, to do team building activities and reflect on the importance of physical activity and volunteering within their organisation. In order to develop their project management skills we ran workshops on leadership, time management and budgeting. The pitch event was a great way for the young leaders to show these skills in action as they presented their ideas to the panel.
Each group had the opportunity to pitch for up to £500 for their project. A number of different areas were covered over the course of the evening, with ideas including boxing, mental health and self-defence programmes. Each group created a budget to show how they would spend the money and what they could do to make the projects sustainable at their organisations.
Some of the groups also brought along their ‘champions’, a younger cohort who are being mentored by the leaders, to the event.
Lizzie Stanton, a panel member and Sports Policy Officer at the Greater London Authority, said “The ideas and projects were brilliant and I was really impressed at the passion and consideration the young people had to make their projects happen.”
Over the next few months, the groups will be delivering their projects, before coming together again at the end of April on a second residential. As part of this residential they will be reflecting and evaluating their projects as well as gaining an OCN accredited Youth Leadership award.
Keep up to date on Twitter via #ActiveLeads.
