City of Worcester Gymnastics - Heating Upgrade

Aim

We need YOUR HELP to fit some new heaters at the gym in Worcester and ensure sessions continue through the colder winter months!

Who are we?

Here at City of Worcester Gymnastics, we aim to provide a safe, effective and child friendly environment in which our members can participate in gymnastics activities under the guidance of appropriately qualified coaches.

We operate an open philosophy and welcome the support of parents or guardians to watch sessions where able.  We also encourage and value parental involvement in the club in many different ways such as volunteer assistant coaching, helping at competitions, selling club kit, maintaining the gym and outside areas.

We have gyms in both Worcester and Malvern.

Our overall club aims:

• To create a fun and enjoyable family environment for all gymnasts regardless of size, ability or fitness levels.
• To provide opportunities at all levels with Womens Artistic, General and Pre-school offered, we also work with the wider community offering pre-school, disability inclusive classes, school use and adult classes.
• To develop health, fitness and social integration, whilst contributing towards physical and psychological well-being.

Why are we crowdfunding?

Every winter we struggle to heat our venue due to outdated and ineffective heating. We want to increase participation through this autumn/winter season by providing a welcoming warm place for children of all ages and abilities from fun grass roots level gymnastics, all the way up to elite/competitive level gymnastics.

Our youngest pre-school children and medically vulnerable children have had to have sessions cancelled due to the venue being too cold for them to safely use the facilities. Our competitive gymnasts also face difficulties training for regional and national competitions during the autumn/winter season,  as such high level skills cannot be performed or trained in low temperatures.

We have a dedicated team of coaching staff and our club are very successful at all levels of participation and we feel we lose valuable training time when the gym is cold and we have to amend training programmes to work safely. 

Sport England - Movement Fund - £7,000 award!

The great news is that Sport England have pledged £7,000 towards the cost of our project! Whilst this is fantastic news, in order for the pledge to be received, we now need to raise at least half of our campaign target (i.e. £7,000) via this Crowdfunding page, from a minimum of 25 unique supporters.

How we’ll spend the money raised

The money raised will be used to fund the modernisation of our existing heating systems at our Worcester gym.

Community impact

We aim to make the gym a warm and welcoming place rather than a cold and sometimes inaccessible space to ensure a lifelong love of sport and physical activity for all members.

We want to increase participation by remaining open on the coldest days. 

We want activity levels to increase by facilitating more pre-school sessions in the autumn/winter season.

We aim to allow activity levels and participation levels to remain the same in winter as it is in summer and spring months. 

We do not want to disadvantage our youngest members and those who are physically and medically vulnerable or disabled. 

We are strong advocates for encouraging female athletes to remain in sport beyond the age of 13 and pausing training programmes in the coldest weather can sometimes result in loss of conditioning and retirement of our older squad members. 

How you can play your part

Please help us unlock the £7,000 pledge from Sport England

There are FIVE simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re thinking of supporting us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Worcester Display Attendees. Please pay for your attendance at our forthcoming displays via this page - Information on how to do this has been circulated by our lead coaches.  Save hunting around for cash, please just confirm your name/gymnast's name and consider making one simple payment for all the displays you are planning to attend.   

3. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Just a fun idea!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made