#AdaptSupportRespond - SUPPORTING THE INITIATIVE
Active Partnerships is supporting the ‘Adapt, Support, Respond’ initiative, in its role as a supporter organisation within the Sport for Development Coalition.
The Coalition is a nationwide movement of charities and organisations working collectively to maximise the positive social impact of sport and physical activity.
‘Adapt, Support, Respond’ aims to shine a spotlight on how organisations across the network have adapted their services to continue supporting individuals and communities in need during lockdown, as well as how they are getting ready to play their part in the nation’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
All of the 160-plus organisations within the Coalition have signed up to a Charter which describes how they are intentionally using sport and physical activity to generate positive social outcomes such as individual physical and mental wellbeing, reducing unemployment and anti-social behaviour, and increasing community cohesion.
Ollie Dudfield, Executive Director of the Sport for Development Coalition, said: “'Adapt, Support, Respond' will collate learning and evidence from across the sector on how the network is adapting in order to maximise its contribution to community resilience and wellbeing over the coming months. The need for all areas of the community to support resilience and wellbeing over the coming months will be critical as the wider social and economic impacts of the pandemic intensify.”
The initiative will also serve to support organisations within the Coalition – having adapted during lockdown and the pandemic, and supported the recovery – in preparing to respond to the post-Covid environment, becoming investment-ready and demonstrating to policy-makers and funders their capability to adapt and respond to the new realities and heightened social challenges brought on by the pandemic.
As part of the initiative, the Coalition has partnered with Mind, the mental health charity, for its first quarterly theme of 2021 which is ‘Sport tackles the Wellbeing Crisis’.
Personal wellbeing scores are at some of the lowest levels recorded since the beginning of the pandemic which comes on the back of the half of the 16 to 25-year-olds surveyed for the 2021 Youth Index reporting their mental health had significantly worsened. Meanwhile the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast that real GDP would fall by over 11% in 2020 with unemployment to reach 7.5%.
The partnership will commence with an online event which will be streamed live on the Coalition website at 1600 GMT on Wednesday 10th March. Hayley Jarvis, Head of Physical Activity for Mind, will be the guest co-host alongside Ollie Dudfield, the Executive Director of the Coalition. The discussion and Q&A will examine how sport and activity can be used to improve mental health, wellbeing and resilience, and feature other programmes and organisations from across the network.
In the following weeks a policy paper on the same theme will be published, drawing on evidence gathered from across the sector. This will underpin a policy forum with key stakeholders and policy-makers in spring.
There will also be an opportunity to put your questions and comments to Hayley and Ollie in the preceding days. In the lead up to the event, Coalition supporters will be invited to discuss and share relevant evidence and key learning from their work supporting mental health and wellbeing during the pandemic.
The event will be made available to be replayed afterwards on Youtube, and will also be shared as the first episode of a new monthly podcast from the Coalition.
The new quarterly format, which will be repeated throughout 2021 and into next year, has been created to support the Coalition’s core objectives of advocacy, impact and investment, and following extensive consultation with supporters of the movement, and key stakeholders across the sector.
To hear the Coalition talk about Sport for Development’s role in the pandemic, and recovery from it, on BBC Radio 5 Live, click here. The Coalition is appealing for more organisations to provide blogs and articles to support the Adapt, Support, Respond initiative and be included in further activity with national media. To add your blog, contact slansley@sportfordevelopmentcoalition.org or if you have impact data that you would like to share, please contact ksmith@sportfordevelopmentcoalition.org.
Read more at sportfordevelopmentcoalition.org or follow @SFDCoalition on Twitter. To contribute to the initiative, please use the hashtag #AdaptSupportRespond (note upper / lower case).
