Investing time now to inspire the future

In her latest blog, Alliance CEO, Emma Boggis, talks about the recent Inspiring Women campaign event, aimed at directly encouraging those in our sector to inspire the next generation.

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of joining an event at the BT Tower to announce a week of planned activity for 23-27 February 2015 to promote opportunities for women to work in sport.

As part of the Inspiring Women campaign, led by Miriam Gonzalez Durantes, the aim of the focus on sport is to promote the wide variety of careers that are available in the sport and recreation sector. Although being an elite athlete might be one - the main focus is actually not on the sports people themselves - rather on the myriad of other opportunities the sector provides, whether that is in direct support of athletes such as coaches, physios or doctors - or working in communications, marketing, sport development or administration.

The launch drew high quality speakers. After hearing from Miriam, both the Minister for Sport Helen Grant and Clare Balding - who needs little introduction - spoke about their support for the campaign. The final speaker - Megan - a Year 11 student from a school in Basildon spoke very impressively about an Inspiring Women event held at her school last year and the impact it made on her own confidence and aspirations and that of her class mates. If anyone needed persuading about the benefits of the campaign - Megan was a great example.

The second part of the event was a speed dating event with young girls having a chance to talk to some of the people attending the event to learn more about what opportunities there are on offer.

I hope many of the people reading this will instantly think of the great many jobs and opportunities that they know our sector offers to girls growing up today indeed many of us might be in. I also hope you might think about what you can do to help support the campaign - but I would urge you to do more than think and take some immediate action. I think there are three things everyone reading this article can do right now…

Firstly, if you are a woman working in the sector - at whatever level doing whatever role- go to the Inspiring Women website and register your details - in doing so you are offering just an hour of your time this year to go and talk to girls in a school near your work or your home - whatever is most convenient to you - to let them know a bit about what you do. And if you are a man reading this article - go and talk to a female colleague or friend and encourage them to sign up!

Secondly, everyone reading this can think about what their organisation can do to help. Can you share this article and the Inspiring Women website with colleagues or friends? As well as signing up myself I have encouraged the female members of the Sport and Recreation Alliance staff and Board, and several of our female Vice Presidents - many of whom have had distinguished careers in sport to volunteer their time - and I am pleased to say they have! Our Vice President, Brigid Simmonds, recently blogged on her experience on giving a talk to a local school.

Finally, what can you do to showcase the issue either in the week of activity planned for the end of February - or if that doesn’t work for your organisation at another time - the campaign is ongoing. There will be a big event at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on 25 February and the campaign organisers are hoping to get all of the Olympic and Paralympic sports represented.

But this isn’t just about the big sports and it isn’t just about something in London. Can you link up your staff with a local school and plan a speed dating event to give young female students the opportunity to learn more about your sport and the opportunities on offer? If you are interested in doing this - we can help link you into the campaign and schools local to you and help promote and facilitate the event so do get in touch.

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