Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Errigal Ciaran Ladies Fundraiser
Omagh, Fermanagh and Omagh, United Kingdom
Aim
Supporting more girls into sport through our new and innovative sports initiative
Who are we?
Errigal Ciaran Gaelic Athletic Club is a GAA club based in Mid Tyrone founded in 1990. Our catchment area covers the Parish of Errigal Ciaran, - Altamuskin, Ballygawley, Garvaghey and Glencull. Currently we provide football and cultural activities to our members from Under 8 to Senior. Our home grounds are based at Park Road, Dunmoyle, Sixmilecross (approx 5 miles North of the Village of Ballygawley).
Our main purpose, aims, and objectives has been to play a significant role in rural community-driven sport, leisure, cross community, culture and wellbeing within our catchment across the parish of Errigal Ciaran. We achieve this by providing facilities, programmes and initiatives for all in and around our surrounding rural catchments. Ultimately, as a GAA Club our main purpose, aims and objectivities is to promote GAA activities within all Club programmes. However, a strong purpose of our Club is to ensure that we are open and inclusive to all. We want our facilities to be welcoming to people outside of our traditional "GAA community".
As such, a major aim of the Club is to deliver programmes which promote this inclusivity going forward to groups traditionally excluded from GAA facilities and those underrepresented in sport (such as females, young people, persons with disabilities, minority ethnics, older people living isolated in our rural community). We do this by providing facilities, programmes and initiatives as noted, as well as volunteering opportunities so people can stay involved in the club outside playing opportunities. Our Club has a rich history of achievements at local and national level, both on and of the pitch. We have over 550+ active members across adults and youths male/female. When augmented with a range of secondary activities including Scor, community health & wellbeing programmes, older persons social events at our facilities, walking/jogging group etc our Club reach far exceeds 800+ people both directly and indirectly. We have a proud tradition of being a forward-thinking and self-funding club, one which has seen us extend beyond our core function of GAA activities, into wider community-focused activities as noted.
Why are we crowdfunding?
We are Crowdfunding because we want to deliver our new and innovative "Proper Fans" programme, which is focused on encouraging more girls into sport who live around our rural catchments of Altamuskin, Ballygawley, Garvaghey and Glencull.
We are all fans of encouraging more girls to take up sport. Therefore, our "proper fans" initiative is a new targeted approach to supporting more girls to be encouraged again to play sport after 2+ years of Covid lockdowns and limited opportunities.
We wanted to launch this programme a few years ago but Covid19 has delayed it until now. Therefore, Crowdfunding will "support us" to "support" more girls to take up sport, stay longer in sport, encourage more girls into coaching as well as more girls into leadership roles such as team management and committee positions going forward thanks to our Crowdfunding efforts.
Crowdfunding, will help us to cover costs to deliver the programme over 12 weeks from April to June 2023, such as external coaching costs, equipment, marketing materials to promote the programme etc.
Your donations will also enable us to receive extra funding from Sport NI, because our "proper fans" programme directly supports girls to take up sport, it supports children & young people – especially those aged between 11-18 years to take up and stay longer in sport, and people living in rural areas for example participants will be those living in rural Altamuskin, Ballygawley, Garvaghey and Glencull.
Covid19 Challenges Faced
As noted, we wanted to launch this programme a few years ago but Covid19 has delayed it until now.
We were unable to fundraise to deliver this programme because of the pandemic
Many girls who were involved in sport before Covid, have drifted away from sport. Therefore, our Crowdfunding will allow us to reach out and encourage those back into sport.
We lost volunteers and coaches since Covid19. We want to Crowdfund to deliver programmes that will encourage more female volunteers and encourage females to move into leadership roles in the Club (Management and Committee positions etc)
Our Club membership dropped during Covid and in particular among our playing female members. We want to build this back up again and Crowdfunding helps us achieve this.
Players physical health has suffered during the pandemic because of a lack of activities delivered.
How we’ll spend the money raised
If you make a pledge to our Crowdfunder page, all money raised will go directly towards delivering our "proper fans" girls programme. For example- External coaches over 12 weeks to deliver introduction to sport coaching in a number of rural schools (after school extra curricular) for girls, allow us to purchase new sports equipment such as balls, bibs, multi sport coaching kits, cones etc to support our female coaches delivering programmes in the community, as well as help us to market the programme through leaflets, posters, sponsored social media posts etc. Money raised will also allow us to support girls who want to embark on the coaching ladder by doing foundation level coaching awards.
Funding will go towards the following:
- 12 weeks External coaching x 2 coaches, for new GAA sessions for girls across rural Altamuskin, Ballygawley, Garvaghey and Glencull £17.50 per hour per coach, 12 hours per week x 12 weeks= £5,040 total for 2 coaches
- New female sports equipment such as GAA footballs, bibs, multi sport coaching kits, @ £1,000
- Team kits for female players @ £1,045
- Market the programme through leaflets, posters, sponsored social media posts @ £250
- Coach Education Budget for female GAA coaching pathways @ £1,000
Community impact
The main impact our Crowdfunder will have is that it will provide more girls in our rural community to access sport, where they cant currently.
Another impact our Crowdfunder will have is that it will encourage more girls in our rural community to get active again.
Our Crowdfunder will have a positive effect on girls mental health within our rural community as it will provide them with confidence to take up sport, get active, get fit and healthy.
Our Crowdfunder will have a positive impact because it provides pathways for girls to progress into volunteering, coaching and committee roles in the community in future if they wish. It will also provide opportunities for more girls to access coaching awards.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. 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. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!
This project successfully funded on 4th May 2023