Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Fighting Back from Covid19
Omagh, Fermanagh and Omagh, United Kingdom
Aim
The aim of our project is to raise much needed funds to help our boxing club 'fight back' after Covid19, by providing more opportunities
Who are we?
Golden Star Boxing Club is a small rural boxing club that provides fun and inclusive boxing and exercise programmes for young people and the wider community, to try out the sport and compete in competitions.
The boxing club, which is based between Trillick and Irvinestown, is aimed at under 18s and currently has 20 members ranging in age from seven to eighteen, including seven girls. We train three nights a week and the boxers hard work and dedication have paid off, with the club winning 38 titles for Mid Ulster, Ulster and All Irelands since forming.
Our boxers boys and girls compete all over Tyrone, Ulster and Ireland therefore.
Our Club is growing, with demand increasing daily. The interest in the sport and our club is particularly high among girls. We believe a large part of this is because of the success of Katie Taylor and our Club promoting the sport to females which in turn makes it a welcoming place for all.
Community impact
Our boxing club has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges still remain through lack of fundraising opportunities, losing volunteers and lack of opportunities for our young people to stay fit and healthy
It has been hard on our Club to continue to adopt to the ever changing regulations and continue to provide a Club for the local area.
During the lockdown periods over the last 2 years our Club has supported the wider rural community efforts ensuring that those most vulnerable were looked after.
The Club are still experiencing the effects of the pandemic, and we need to fundraise to ensure we are in a strong position to be providing our young people living in rural communities such as ours, with the platform and opportunities to lead healthy & active lifestyles.
Why are we crowdfunding?
The project entails our coach who turned 70 running 10k in less than 70 mins to raise much needed funds for the Club.
We want to continue to champion opportunities for all, and especially disadvantaged groups in sport such as girls. Continued life long sporting participation ensures positive changes in mental heath, positive lifelong memories & strong friendships and bonds, which our club is providing.
Therefore, to allow us to FIGHT BACK after COVID-19, we need to encourage more volunteers into the Club, develop our capacity by purchasing specific equipment, extend our outreach within the local community to attract more underrepresented groups, and most importantly ensure our young people have access to sport and wellbeing.
How we’ll spend the money raised
Fundraising will be used to ensure we can achieve what has been noted above. For example, we want to be providing a range of multi-sport / boxercise coaching sessions, local funday activities & Club day outs for our young club members.
We want to provide our coaches with equipment and coaching gear which will encourage them and show that our volunteers are appreciated and vital to our Club.
We wish to update the equipment currently available to our coaches. Most of our equipment is outdated so we plan to have new equipment for each coaching team.
Our aim is to provide expertise coaching and promotion for our female boxing programme to encourage participation from young girls in the local area.
We hope to embark on a coach education scheme to ensure every new coach is qualified to a minimum of foundation level in boxing.
How you can help us reach our target
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. Create a fundraiser of your own. Use the button on our page to get started. 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 18th August 2022