The Welsh Sports Foundation secures £100,000 Welsh Government Grant

The Welsh Sports Foundation secures £100,000 Welsh Government Grant

The Welsh Sports Foundation is delighted to be a recipient of funding from the Welsh Government’s Child Poverty Innovation and Supporting Communities grant. The £100,000 award will support the Foundation to build on its promising pilot projects in Caernarfon and Ely in Cardiff and expand its reach into Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil.

The Foundation directly supports young people from Wales’ most deprived communities to participate in sport and physical activity, by providing vouchers to cover the cost of participation.

So far, the Welsh Sports Foundation has supported young people to participate in a wide range of activities, and has built successful partnerships with referral agents who can best identify the young people who need support.

Working with partners Sport:80, the Foundation is building an online platform to ensure that vouchers can be produced instantly by the Foundation and provided to the young person or their referral agent. Similarly, payments can be made quickly and effectively between the Foundation and the activity provider and free of any stigma.

The Welsh Government grant will enable the scale up of these activities in Ely and Caernarfon, and the creation of new partnerships in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil.

Over the course of the next 12 months, the Foundation will look to enable approximately 600 children and young people across these communities to participate in around 40,000 hours of physical activity, supporting them in building a lifelong passion for sport and physical activity.

Based on data from the Foundation’s first pilot project, we expect gender parity and the majority of participants to be between seven and 11 years of age.

Chair of the Welsh Sports Foundation, Richard Thomas, said:

“This investment by the Welsh Government is key to the continued success of the Welsh Sports Foundation.

“We know that affordability is too often a barrier to young people’s participation in sport and physical activity and all the benefits it can bring to a person’s life.

“We are very excited about the future and see this investment as key to bringing extra funding into the Foundation, that will allow us to increase our reach and make sure every child in Wales can enjoy sport and physical activity.”

Lynn Pamment CBE, founding trustee and Chair of the Welsh Sports Association, added:

“I’m really pleased the Welsh Government have been able to support the Welsh Sports Foundation and our mission to open up access to sport to as many young people in Wales as possible.

“Establishing the Welsh Sports Foundation was a key part of the Welsh Sports Association strategy for 2022-2025, so it’s great to see that the effort we have put into setting up the organisation and running it effectively has been recognised.”

Notes
• The Welsh Sports Foundation was established as an independent charity by the Welsh Sports Association. The Welsh Sports Association provides administrative support to the Welsh Sports Foundation.