WSA member Active4Blood striving to help save lives through sport
Welsh Sports Association (WSA) member Active4Blood is a charity working as a key influencing organisation to help save lives in supporting the Blood Service.
The organisation harnesses the power of sport and physical activity to drive support for our vital Blood Service and ultimately those in need of life-saving blood donations.
They do this through the running of events for blood donation, education of young ambassadors to champion the message, and manging the delivery of community-based events.
All this activity is underpinned by Active4Blood’s pillars, Engage – Educate – Empower.
The average age of blood donors across the UK is currently over 45, with donations from ethnically diverse communities desperately lacking as well.
Blood reserves can become dangerously low, meaning a new younger, more diverse cohort of donors must be identified and recruited, a space in which Active4Blood strives to encourage and promote change.
Active4Blood’s work aims to do this by engaging people of all backgrounds and ages through the universal language of sport and physical activity.
The charity deploys a number of projects, targeting different ages and communities in the process. The focus and charity Motto is “Blood not Money”, a unique and innovative sponsorship methodology and a way of supporting charity causes by giving what we all have.
For example, Acive4Blood run projects such as Schools4Blood, Forces4Blood and Rugby4Blood, which has been supported by fellow WSA member the Welsh Rugby Union.
The charity is now seeking to widen the reach across all sports and has now launched the Sports4Blood Project. The ethos is focusing on working with all sports to raise participation and encourage and link this engagement to blood donating activities.
We know that, in Wales, the sport and leisure sector acts as the cornerstone within most communities so, as a wider community, we have the opportunity to be a vehicle for change in this important issue.
To offer support, WSA members and fellow organisations in the sector can get in touch with Active4Blood to support this work, by emailing [email protected].
Active4Blood Co-Founder, Trustee and Chair, Julian Wilde-Davies, commented:
“We all support many different charities by fundraising and donating our hard-earned cash. Many of us take part in charity events including cycling, running and walking.
“I personally find that asking the same people to support me financially time and time again is difficult. We all have plenty of ‘the red stuff’, so I thought why not continue to support a good cause by donating what I already have, rather than cash donations.”
And thus, the Blood Sponsor concept was created. Head to the Active4Blood website here, or contact Julian to learn more!
