Sporting Active
One Voice Blackburn believes in the power of sport and physical activity as a means of encouraging greater teamwork and cohesion, developing leadership skills in both young people and adults and supporting healthier lifestyles.
The organisation has been supported by various grants to support people of all ages, and in particular females, to stay active to improve their health and well being.
We have worked on programmes such as Together An Active Future, StreetGames, and various projects with Active Lancashire.
Download the ‘Together An Active Future’ document…
StreetGames Partnership Yields Doorstep Success
One Voice Blackburn teamed up with Street Games for the Doorstep sport Empowering Young People Project. The project focused on the provision of fun and valuable sporting opportunities for young disadvantaged people. One Voice Blackburn initially empowered 10 young people, one project worker and four young people to access the Street Games training academy project. We were able to recognise the valuable contribution sport makes to the development of life skills for young people and provided training for those who expressed interest.
Our young people were at the heart of the project and developed key skills for their physical and mental well being. Our members engaged in the various stages of the project including empowering sessions, developing enhanced life skills and started to lead sessions for themselves. We established and developed a motivated group of young people that regularly engaged in our sports sessions on a weekly basis.
As part of the project we adapted our sports sessions to the needs and wants of our members with the introduction of new sports including dodgeball and badminton. We began to incorporate digital means of presenting content through the use of various social media platforms. We developed a total of 4 sports leads who now assist our coaches in running sessions and have engaged with more than 35 young people throughout our project work and physical sporting activities.
During the course of the project our young members worked on a social action project titled ‘We Are Beautiful’ which featured a social media campaign that focused on the affects of social media pressures and expectations. They held a workshop to discuss the various impacts of social media and talked about ways to help those that struggle with the false realities they see online.
‘The Street Games Doorstep Sports Project gave me the opportunity to develop my skills in leadership. I now assist with leading cricket sessions and feel as though I am giving back to others’ Anila Shafiq
‘I look forward to attending the sports sessions every week and meeting my friends. We play a variety of sports including dodgeball and rounders’ Hana Ashraf
