The Sport and Recreation Alliance is sharing its pledge of support to #iwill, the national campaign promoting youth social action

The Sport and Recreation Alliance is celebrating Share Your Pledge Day today as part of the #iwill campaign, and calling other organisations to join them in supporting youth social action.

The Alliance pledged last year to support this growing movement that aims to make involvement in social action part of life for more 10-20 year-olds around the UK. Youth social action is defined as ‘young people taking practical action in the service of others to create positive change’ and includes activities such as campaigning, fundraising and volunteering.

Working with the #iwill campaign, the Alliance developed a pledge for the sport and recreation sector to encourage youth social action as well as making an individual pledge as well.

The Alliance’s pledge reads that we:

• Publicly affirm the importance of youth social action for the sport and recreation sector
• Encourage our members to support the campaign and identify actions they can take to encourage and support youth social action opportunities
• Advocate and lead – lend a voice to the social action agenda through publicly supporting social action at a senior level
• Value the skills developed by social action during recruitment processes
• Use our volunteering days to promote and deliver social action opportunities
• Aim to get at least 25% of members to make a pledge by the end of 2015

In addition we have added a youth volunteering category to the Annual Community Sport and Recreation Awards and this will be presented for the first time this year and have a session dedicated to youth engagement at our Sports Summit tomorrow.

The pledge for the sector is as follows:

“We believe passionately in the power of youth social action to help young people develop the skills and qualities to reach their full potential and make a significant contribution to their communities. The sport and recreation sector cannot survive without the commitment and hard work of thousands of volunteers who give their time and energy to help our activities flourish.

As a member of the Sport and Recreation Alliance supporting the Campaign, we will step up to serve and help all young people to have every opportunity to serve others.”

Since pledging to the #iwill campaign, the Alliance has encouraged its members to follow suit and use the above pledge for the sector or create their own, with organisations such as Parkour and the Angling Trust already pledging their involvement.

Emma Boggis, Chief Executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance said, “We believe that this is an excellent initiative which will help the sector and are fully committed to getting as many of our members to pledge towards the #iwill campaign as possible.”

“The importance of volunteers is something which is common to everyone of our members however large or small they are, but most of our members would recognise that many of their volunteers are in the older age group and developing a pipeline of new volunteers is important to the longevity of their sport or recreation. So supporting a campaign which encourages more young people to do it has to be a win/win.”

2015 Cabinet Office research produced compelling evidence that young people who take part in social action develop key character and employability skills. It follows on from this that involvement creates a double-benefit, strengthening communities and enhancing the skills of young participants.

Charlotte Hill, CEO of the charity running the #iwill campaign says: “We are delighted that the Sport and Recreation Alliance has pledged to support our work, and today is sharing their progress to inspire others to take part also. If we are to make involvement in social action the norm for 10-20 year-olds we need partners to commit to tangible actions just as they are doing. The involvement of the Alliance will undoubtedly help us progress towards our goal.’

Working with business, education and voluntary sector partners, the campaign aims to ensure that all young people can access social action opportunities, whatever their background. The #iwill goal is to raise by 50% the number of 10-20 year-olds taking part in social action by 2020, which will mean an additional 1.5 million young people will be active in their communities.

To find out more about youth social action and volunteering within the sport and recreation sector, click here.

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