WSA striving to break Welsh-language barriers for families across Wales
In the Senedd on Wednesday, the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, Jeremy Miles, heard an example of the challenges faced by many families across Wales regarding accessing Welsh language resources – a fact that the Welsh Sports Association (WSA) is striving to eradicate.
Llyr Gruffydd MS posed the question of what support the Welsh Government is providing to ensure that leisure activities are available to children and young people through the medium of Welsh, citing the example of one family that had been waiting three years for Welsh-medium swimming lessons.
Responding to the query about the barriers and discrimination based on language, Jeremy Miles said:
“We’ve prepared standards that place duties on local authorities to provide education courses through the medium of Welsh, which include specific standards for educational courses aimed at young people. It’s a matter for the Commissioner to set the standards and to ensure compliance.
“But, to be proactive from our point of view in this field,” he continued. “We do provide significant funding for partners and we also provide funding to the Urdd Sport Apprenticeships that focus on increasing Welsh-medium skills for sporting coaches in the future; so ensuring that people are able to provide these lessons through the medium of Welsh is an important part of that work – that is one of our priorities in terms of funding.”
As part of our strategy for 2022-25, Setting Sport up for Success, the Welsh Sports Association is committing to increasing the Welsh-medium resources and opportunities we make available to our members. This is a pledge to ensure that sport and leisure, as a space, is as inclusive and accessible as possible in order for everyone to have equal opportunity in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
As well as providing Wales’ only bilingual DBS checking service, we were thrilled to launch the inaugural Raising Confidence Residential Course in partnership with the National Centre for Learning Welsh – a free-of-charge, sport-specific course to help intermediate Welsh learners among our membership base become more confident in the use of the language!
Alongside this, the WSA can offer members a two-part, online training course – the Welsh Language Sport and Leisure Course – aimed at getting people within the sport and leisure sector up and running with the Welsh language.
Don’t hesitate in getting in contact with the team to find out more about these new and exciting Welsh-language services, as well as checking out our Welsh Language Support page!
To view all of the services on offer from the WSA, visit our Member Benefits page.
And to join our membership base, check out our Become a Member page!
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