Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Youth for Woodvale
Belfast, United Kingdom
Aim
Our project aims to introduce girls specific teams to our club. We wish to reconnect with those young girls who stopped playing over Covid.
Who are we?
Woodvale FC
We are a community based club in West Belfast, an area of high social and economic deprivation. We have been running as a club for over 30 years in the Greater Shankill area.
Covid has had a huge effect on our club and the sport we love. A lot of young people and volunteers simply gave up sport after lockdown. This has had a massive effect on not only us as a club but has effected young peoples mental health as a result.
As a club we aim to run this new programme over a 12 week period from 1/2/23 to 26/4/23, with 2 x 2 hour coaching sessions per week specifically aimed at girls football development,this is something that our club has never tried before and we are eager to get started with this new initiative, to enable us to do this we ate looking to train 5 coaches to take these new teams and these will be supported by coaches already within our club. We will hire a quality floodlight 3G pitch and purchase quality equipment to help with coaching. We will in-turn be able to offer this to our community free so opening it up to those young girls in need of social interaction and physical activity. We will also run Mental awareness sessions supported by TAMHI and ifa ahead of the game strategy worked into our training sessions to make them fun and interactive. This will be of great benefit to the local community as we are situated in an area of high social and economic deprivation. It will also help young girls reengage with their peers after covid lockdowns
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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 as a club we pride ourselves on and strive to help all within our community. We work hard within our community to sign post those in need to local mental health charities.
Over Covid we delivered food parcels to the elderly and vulnerable within our community.
We work with young people within the community in after school clubs and supporting the elderly with free tea and coffee mornings.
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Why are we crowdfunding?
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
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How we’ll spend the money raised
By supporting us we aim to bring young girls 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.
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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 17th February 2023