SportInspired’s Community Games unleash the potential of communities and awaken aspirations to inspire happier, healthier lives. They are an innovative and exciting approach to serving the objectives of community development and increasing youth and adult participation in sport.
Each Community Games is a four to six month project centred on a competitive multi-sports festival and volunteering programme, which is designed in part or in its entirety by local people. At the heart of each Community Games there are:
- Local school children – who participate as competitors
- Local teenagers – who participate as Young Leaders (event designers, team leaders and mentors);
- Adults from local commercial organisations – offering positive role models and leading by example as team mentors, scorers, assistant coaches, etc.
- Local sports clubs – who attract new members, build their profile and develop their clubs by running the different sports on the day (at least 8 of them at each Games, including at least one disability sport)
The three guiding principles of our Community Games are:
- Active and regular participation in sport reaps untold personal and social benefits,
- There really is a sport for everyone, it’s just a case of discovering which one is for you
- All our stakeholders will benefit from being involved.
Community Games building bridges between:
- Individuals and sport
- Sports clubs, schools and youth groups
- Neighbouring communities and schools
- Businesses and local communities
- Young people and adults
- Corporate employees and community volunteering
- Able-bodied and disabled sport (20% of all the sport at our Games are Paralympic sports).
They achieve this through three phases of work:
“Design”: Two to three months of community engagement to ensure the Community Games are:
- tailored by local schools and sports clubs for local people;
- designed to deliver measurable value for all stakeholders;
- safe, logistically robust and deliverable.
“Deliver”: Five days to set-up, run and decommission a competitive multi-sports festival, in which:
- hundreds of local school children compete in at least 8 different sports (including disability sport),
- local sports clubs provide coaches to recruit new members and increase their profile;
- local young leaders and corporate volunteers work in partnership to make it a success.
“Legacy”: Two to three months of legacy-building to ensure that:
- the young people are supported to take up sports they’d like to play again;
- driving grassroots sports participation;
- increasing a sense of community pride; and
- community and business partners achieve their goals;
- building relationships between diverse community groups; and
- delivering HR, CSR, and brand outcomes.
Community Games are offered as:
- a free community-building service for schools, councils and community sports clubs; and
- a fee-paying service for businesses to deliver:
- staff development and engagement,
- community investment,
- employee-volunteering,
- brand-building.
Interested to learn more about where and how we’ve done this? Please feel free to read more about our achievements.