Sports

This 12-month leadership academy is for 100 young people aged 14-24 years-old from London’s most underserved communities. The curriculum, co-designed by the academy youth board, aims to improve young people’s access to employment and work experience opportunities through volunteering, insight days with sport sector employers, and workshops for young people to develop the professional skills needed in the sport sector.

Early evidence of outcomes achieved shows that for young people:

• 89% feel more confident about exploring potential job opportunities in the sports sector 
• 100% have learnt new essential and sports sector specific skills and agreed that the skills they have learnt will be useful in future
• 95% have a better understanding of what skills they need to find work in the sports sector

This provision builds on the success of London Youth’s after school and holiday sports programme. This provision expands out of school sport for young people and provides cost-of-living support for youth organisations.

Successes to date include:

• During the summer of 2022, Getting Active delivered a range of sport and physical activity events to 3000 young people through 105 grassroot youth organisations
• 55 young leaders organised and managed 30 community sport and physical activity events
• The new 35 grassroots youth and community organisations represent 23 London boroughs, with 17 projects in outer-London boroughs

The Young People Affected by Violence Steering Group (YPAV) consists of representatives from 10 sports organisations including both youth professionals and young people. The aim of the steering group is to identify ways of using physical activity and sport to achieve positive outcomes for young people at risk or involved in violence affecting young people.

Successes to date include:

• 18 young people engaged in the group and co-created pilots including developing the ideas, creating funding criteria, and supporting in application assessments
• 2 pilots from the 2022-2023 steering group successfully expanded into full programmes (Sports Leadership Academy and Internships)

This internship is a 12-month paid programme for young people aged 18-24 years-old from under-represented backgrounds who want to pursue careers in the sporting industry and beyond. Partners hosting interns include England Netball, Women in Sport and GB Snowsport.

Interns have worked collaboratively with sporting organisations to promote opportunities and implement best practice for hiring diverse candidates. This has resulted in 3 organisations revising their recruitment processes and 4 youth community organisations creating referral pathways for young people into sporting organisations.

The aim of this programme is to work with children in years 5 and 6 who are experiencing difficulties within the primary setting and/or may have been excluded to support their transition into secondary school. The projects will allow under-served young Londoners in years 5 and 6 to have access to physical activity and a trusted adult (mentor) who will boost their self-esteem, self-confidence, and engagement with education.

Successes to date include:

• 1,363 sports and mentoring activities delivered in 9 London boroughs reaching 802 young people
• 22 youth professionals have taken part in relevant and high-quality training to improve community sport and mentoring provision
• More than half of the organisations reported improved relationships with local schools through this delivery
• 8 organisations awarded funding to continue to deliver the programme