This campaign has now closed
Our Sports Buddies programme aims to forge lasting, sociable friendships between people with learning disabilities (Participants) and a support volunteer (buddy). The carefully matched pairs will both have a keen interest in health, fitness and friendship.
Categories
Beneficiaries
Situation
Over 90% of our community rely on a support worker to access mainstream social spaces, this inhibits the chance to meet friends, new people or be physically active. Speaking to many participants during the pandemic, 84% said they would like a ‘Sports Buddy’ to help them reconnect with physical activities. Many have suffered extreme social isolation and anxiety because of lockdowns and shielding. 78% of our community want find ways to be physically active but don’t know where to begin.
Solution
We have enabled our community to get active and live a healthy lifestyle, we match new volunteers and participants (people with learning disabilities) by preferences, abilities and interests. There are monthly Sports Socials with a larger group and an advisory group, run with the participants to give agency and involvement with the programme. We have established wide reaching partnerships from a community base, to recruit new volunteers and organisations with a range of sporting expertise.
