Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Our Football, Our Future
Belfast, United Kingdom
Aim
Our Project aims to introduce girls and boys of all ages to football. We wish to reconnect with those who stopped playing over Covid also.
22nd Old Boy's & Ladies
We are a community-based club in North/West Belfast, an extremely high area of social and economic deprivation. We have provided a safe space for football for 70 years for people of all genders and ages within the local community. Covid has had a massive impact on our club and the sport we provide within the community. A lot of young people and volunteers didn't return to the sport after the pandemic, and this has not only affected us as a club but effected the young people's mental health.
Our Community impact
We work within our local community not only to bring football to all but to promote positive mental wellbeing too. This is something the club is very passionate about both within the club and in the wider community. We work with local organisations such as TAMHI and Extern to help spread, mental awareness and break down stigma surrounding it. As part of our training sessions, we include mental wealth games training for our members to help them deal with any problems they might have. We can then signpost them to the relevant agencies.
We run a yearly event free to the community in Woodvale Park called Take 5 for Wellbeing and this is to promote positive mental wellbeing through sport. We are involved in many different community groups such as SAFE project, Community Response programme, Shine forum and SAMHI.
[upload an image here]
How Covid affected us
We lost the vast majority of our financial revenues due to the pandemic which significantly impacted our efforts to develop our club and players. Players and volunteers were reluctant to come back to the club or play the game they love. We have found that young people didn't want to leave the house as much as before and so not participating in football.
We would use this project as a way of helping us recover from this pandemic and build back stronger with youth, so building for the future. We would specifically target girls and believe in investing in our youth they will provide a bright and stable future for our club and community going forward. Getting the young people out of the house and back into sport is key to better development and mental health.
[upload an image here]
How you, can help us.
By supporting us we aim to bring young girls and boys back playing the sport they love. This in-turn will help them out of social isolation and make new friends or re-acquaint with old friends. We will also engage with local schools to try and get those who haven't participated in football before into the game.
With your support we will provide quality training facilities for the young people.
The equipment with which to train.
Qualified IFA coaches to help the young people learn not only the football skills, but fitness and teamwork. Help us also to train new coaches to help our teams grow.
Educate them around things that effect their mental health such as bullying, through mental wealth games training.
Kits and training kits for the young people to give them a sense of belonging.
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 5th December 2022