One Year On from the Times and Sunday Times 2020 Christmas Appeal
By Sported | 1st December 2021
This time last year at Sported, we were gearing up as one of the charities chosen for the Times and Sunday Times Christmas Appeal 2020, enlisting our first ambassador, Tottenham defender Eric Dier, and shining a light on community sports groups in our network across the UK and the work they do to help young people in their communities.
The Times donors raised an incredible £650,000 for Sported and we’ve had a busy year ensuring that those groups most in need in our network have had the support from us to continue to play a vital role in their area.
Last year we made three commitments:
Recruit 150 new groups to the Sported network
Within the past year, we have welcomed 240 new community sports groups into the Sported network who can access our range of support services for free.
Support 600 of the most in need groups
Since January this year, we have directly supported 938 groups, of which half were located in the top 30% most economically deprived areas in the country.
We provided webinars, grant funding (signposting and direct support), new programmes and provision of volunteers to work with these groups to achieve bigger goals. Involvement in these programmes is free for all Sported members.
Tackle the biggest issues facing young people including mental health
In response to our insight, which showed mental health and youth resilience as the biggest cause for concern among young people, Sported created the Time in Mind project using appeal funds.
This project has created spaces for 240 group leaders to be trained in identifying and responding to signs of mental health challenges amongst young people. We have also been able to provide grant funding for 24 groups across the UK to develop and test their ideas for building resilience and improving mental wellbeing of their young participants. We are taking the learning from those projects into future programmes and are currently collating the impact of the grants and programmes carried out by these groups.
Find out more about the Time In Mind Project.
Our work continues to ensure that community groups survive for young people to thrive. Thank you to the donors from last year’s Times Christmas appeal for allowing us to expand our services to more community sports groups.
Your support has bolstered groups that are a lifeline to many.