A project to empower young people to enter the game of rugby-increasing players, volunteers, coaches, event managers and other roles in 15 England communities
Impact & Learning
Key achievements:
Sheffield Hallam’s evaluation notes of one project location, “the key to [its] success lay in accepting that the key beneficiaries of the project were the volunteers who supported it, as much as the participants at the sessions which they provided”. This was an important theme across the projects. Of the 215 volunteers, 60 received formal training a part of Spirit of Rugby, and some had already gone on to paid employment in host organisations or the wider sporting sector.
The Sheffield Hallam Evaluation notes:
“The majority of volunteers reported improved time management (70%), more creative thinking (68%), better planning and co-ordination (62%) and improved problem-solving abilities (57%) as a direct consequence of engaging with the programme.”
“In addition, 84% of volunteers felt that they had developed new skills (as well as enhancing existing abilities). Perhaps most significantly, a clear majority of the volunteers had met new people (81%) and developed new contacts (73%)”
Key learnings
- This project – like our grants to Youth Sport Trust for Breaking Boundaries (Cricket World Cup) and England Athletics for Team Spirit (World Athletics Championships) was developed to be aligned with a major sporting event but was not part of official legacy activities. All three projects may have benefited from making the event more central to their project design.
- The project raised interested questions about to what extent a sporting event should be used to bring in new people or whether it ‘activates’ existing fans in different ways
- Each group of young people was given control of a budget of £30,000 – a “daunting” sum, which the groups took very seriously, and found difficult to spend. Young people took it to heart when activities did not go to plan – poor weather disseminating attendance at one flagship event, for example. Freedom to experiment with different types of activity, and to “fail” was an important part of the development for young volunteers.
- It was challenging to keep young volunteers engaged over the two-year period – there was high turnover as exams, leaving school and other milestones affected their ability to participate in the project. There is tension between desire to build long term relationships with young people, and how realistic it is to expect a consistent group of young people to engage over 2 years.