Leeds Diving Club Corona virus Crowdfund

Aim

The City of Leeds Diving Club needs your help to recover from the COVID crisis, ensuring the club has a future for diving in Leeds

The effects of Covid

As we all know Covid-19 has had a huge impact on all of our children, they haven’t been able to see friends and take part in the sport they have come to love! Many have missed out on their first competitions, all the Nationals were cancelled! As a club we haven’t been able to host our Gstar competition which raises much needed funds for the club (that go towards our children’s competitions, coach development, volunteer training and so much more!) and encourages the local community to come and see some great diving.

One of our key aims is to increase participation in our local community of South Leeds and in particular BAME individuals but we need funds to be able to provide free sessions & equipment to those individuals.

Our Challenge

We could just ask for donations but we want our wonderful divers of all ages, to have a bit of a fun challenge and all get involved! Let’s keep our youngsters engaged and even better keep them fit!

So here’s challenge one:

In diving there is a pathway, for most youngsters their first competition would be Shipley Novices, they would then progress towards National Skills level, then National Age Group, Junior Elites and who knows one day - The Olympic Games!

As everyone missed these this year we have decided to total up the time it would take to get from John Charles Aquatics Center to each of this years hosting venues and back!

Our divers will aim you to cycle/ run / walk  and every mile they do will equal 1 minute closer to Tokyo!!

It’s a total of 2688 minutes!! Imagine if we could raise £1 for every minute!

Challenge Two will involve a 14 hour 20 minute live workout!

Positive impact on the wider community

We will donate £100 to the NHS of each venue when we have achieved that distance and in the case of Tokyo we will donate the £100 to NHS charities together!

We believe diving benefits the local community by getting children of all ages active in our sport, helping them overcome fears, develop resilience and most importantly believing in themselves in order to perform spectacular dives and we want to widen the net and bring people in who don’t normally get the opportunity to participate in Aquatics

Also throughout lock down we have engaged divers and families who haven't been able to get out, providing online workouts, live zoom workouts and even been available to chat to children about their mental health struggles throughout this period.

We work with Swim England to recruit and train athletes from schools right across the Leeds district, to produce award winning divers including Olympic Gold medalist Jack Laugher, but also offer a programme for inactive teenagers to give them something to focus on, encourage activity and get them "off the street".

We are also looking to introduce programmes focused on supporting vulnerable families across South Leeds (where we are based) and also to increase BAME participation but due to Covid and the need to space squads / reduce squad sizes to ensure social distancing,  we are going to have to expand the pool hours and also coaching hours which will become a cost to the club.  South Leeds is also a low socio economic area and we aim to encourage more local people to come and try diving.

The club also offers volunteering opportunities and training not just to club members but open to anyone across the community.  This includes Duke of Edinburgh award and work experience placements.

Whatever you donate will contribute to the maintenance and purchasing of equipment for our divers who will face a new normal to their training routine when they return to the pool.   The funds will also be added to our hardship fund which will be opened up to members whose families have been affected by covid 19 to ensure all divers at the club can attend competitions and camps who would otherwise be unable to due to financial restrictions and towards equipment and sessions when we launch our South Leeds project.

We really appreciate any contribution that people are willing to make to ensure the future of our close knit club, that is integral to the physical and mental well being of so many children.

Any deliveries which require international postage may incur a separate fee.

This project successfully funded on 16th July 2020