Youth Activists Kick-Start Community Projects
2nd July 2019
This weekend young people from across Scotland met and trained on sports activism
The Youth Activist Academy launched in winter 2018 and since then has been building up to a fantastic training weekend. This weekend 27 young people from across Scotland got together and trained up on sports activism. Jordan Daley from TIE Campaign kicked the weekend off with a workshop on activism, telling us the fantastic story of TIE Campaign and getting the participants to think abut the creation of their own projects.
Later we were joined by Lou Englefield, Director of Football v Homophobia who talked us through the highs and lows of Football v Homophobia campaigns and gave advice on activism in football and wider sports. LEAP Sports Executive Director Hugh Torrance ran a workshop on LGBTIQ+ sports, why we need it, the issues LGBTIQ+ people face in sport and why activism is important, event the behind-the-scenes activism. Finally the young people did some work on project management and logistics, just in time for them to work on their own projects.
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On the last day of the residential young people broke into groups to work on community projects. The young people will work on these projects for 4 months, graduating in November 2019. The projects include, a 101 guide to working with LGBTIQ+ people, two policy review projects, one that looks at sports facilities and the other that looks at sports groups trans policies, guidance will be created for the trans community. There are two Football v Homophobia projects, one will create a toolkit for coaches will the other will create a virtual list for junior football clubs with guidance where needed. There will be two projects that create campaigns, one that will show intergenerational experiences in P.E and another that will tell stories of BAME LGBTIQ+ people in sport. Finally, one project will be following on from Scottish Athletics inclusion of a non-binary category and encouraging 5k races to add this.
These projects will support the ongoing work of LEAP as well as giving young people experiences, tools and accreditation for activism projects.
One young person said "Good, informative sessions, lovely people! Very exciting and motivating"
Project Leader Angharad Englefield said "We are very excited to see the work these fantastic young people do through their activism projects and it was a joy to work with such motivated, passionate, brilliant young people this weekend"
