Sport England: Active Together has provided £6,000 of match funding
Hart Swimming Club Fundraiser
Fleet, England, United Kingdom
Aim
We are appealing to our community, friends and businesses to help raise funds to support our club through these challenging times.
Hart Swimming Club is the only competitive swimming club in Hart District, with over 250 members aged from 7 to 70 years old. We have strong and established links into the local community.
We have been operating for over 50 years and have helped develop thousands of young people from the local area into competitive swimmers. Many have gone on to County, Regional and National success.
Our young swimmers are all dedicated to their sport. Our more experienced swimmers train for up to 16 hours each week. They participate and develop in a truly competitive sport, keep themselves physically fit and benefit from the social interactions and friendships that they develop. It is critical that we continue to provide these opportunities in the future, keep them engaged with the club, and in sporting and physical activity.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for all of us. It has affected our daily lives in ways we could only imagine just one year ago. We are a not-for-profit community organisation, and our activities are funded by monthly membership fees from swimmers and vital income (£65,000) generated from an annual programme of Open Meets, or galas. The pandemic has prevented us from running these events and securing this much needed money.
When indoor swimming pools were re-opened after the first lockdown, we were able to offer our young swimmers a full training schedule. To provide a COVID-secure environment, we must operate in a different way. There are restrictions on the number of swimmers that can swim in each lane and strict social distancing measures must be followed. This comes at an additional cost of £1,000 per week (or £46,000 over a full swimming season).
The club is solely run by volunteers and during lockdown we have continued to provide our young swimmers with a full programme of online activities. These have included fitness programmes, weekly squad 'Zoom' sessions, family events and fun challenges, online 'Q&A' events with current and former GB swimming Olympians and yoga classes. We are extremely proud of our achievements and the coordinated help from our volunteers, for which we have received a 'Queens Award Nomination for Voluntary Service'.
We are looking proactively at how we can raise funds to support Hart Swimming Club through the pandemic and into the future. We want to be able to offer the same level of support to our young swimmers, with a full comprehensive programme of activities. We need to ensure that we remain a 'fully inclusive' community sports club, with membership fees that are affordable for all.
We look for your support to raise £20,000 towards our overall target. This will help us ensure that young people in our community can continue to realise their potential as competitive swimmers, with all the physical and mental benefits that this brings.
No support is too small.
We thank you in advance for any help that you can give.
Aside from donating, there are many other ways in which you can help.
- Share our story with your family, friends, and colleagues.
- Let us know if you or your business is willing to donate a prize or reward for our fund raising.
Thank you from the bottom of our #HeART!
This project successfully funded on 1st June 2021