ACTIVE WOMEN - New Sport England Themed Round

If you wish to apply to the Active Women Themed Round, you must ensure that your project has a strong focus on one or both of our two highlighted groups. Sport England will only fund those projects which directly address their objectives for this round. If your project is not appropriate to this theme it may be better suited for a subsequent theme or other funding programmes, such as the Small Grants Fund.

Sport England are running a number of pre-application workshops to provide greater detail on the types of projects they are looking to fund, along with an explanation on the rationale and criteria for this specific themed round.

These will be held on the following dates:

18th November 2009 - Manchester

20th November 2009 – Reading

23rd November 2009 – Birmingham

You can book a place on a workshop online.

http://www.sportengland.org/funding/active_women.aspx

The first themed round (Rural Communities) attracted over 500 applications, of which only 30 projects have been encouraged to progress to the second stage of bid development.

Demand can far outstrip the availability of funds and therefore it is a highly competitive process. A total of £10m National Lottery funding is available for this theme so unfortunately we will not be able to fund every application, however justifiable and worthwhile the project may be.

It is vital therefore that projects are designed specifically to address the demands of the particular theme as we would prefer not to waste your time, effort and money in creating and submitting applications that are likely not to be supported.

To be eligible for funding under this theme, applications must demonstrate that projects will address the specific barriers to participation in sport faced by either:

Women in disadvantaged communities (the 20% most deprived lower super output areas in the country)

Women caring for children under 16.

Projects need to demonstrate how they will increase the number of women playing sport from either one or both of these groups. Sport England has a target of getting one million people playing more sport. Your project will contribute to the delivery of this target

Not only do applications have to demonstrate how they will remove existing barriers in order that more women from the two target groups can take part in sport, they must also look at how they can allow those women to take part in sport more often

The selection of this theme

Women participate in less sport than men. Only 13% of women take part in 30 minutes of sport three times a week compared to 20% of men. The data also reveals that 30% of women take part in sport once a week whilst 37% do sport once a month, many of whom would like to participate more but face real barriers in doing so.

In order to focus our investment through this themed round of funding and maximise its impact, we have selected two groups of women to target under the overall theme of women’s participation.

The challenge involved in raising participation is different for each of the two groups:

Women in disadvantaged communities

For women in disadvantaged communities, regular participation in sport is lower than the average with over seven out of ten currently playing no sport at all. In addition less than half would currently like to play sport. The challenge is therefore to stimulate local demand for sport amongst these women.

Women caring for children under 16

Seven out of ten women caring for children under 16 would like to play more sport. However, research suggests that other competing priorities take preference over sport. The challenge is therefore to identify and provide an appropriate and accessible supply of sporting opportunities to meet demand.