From Abu Dhabi to Loughborough

This week we’ve been continuing our work with the Abu Dhabi Department of Community Development in support of their brilliant community programme, Degayeg. With a focus on inactive Emiratis, but open to all, it has been (and continues to be) an absolute pleasure to work with some incredible people and impact some truly special communities. As we step into the Middle East summer it’s going to be fascinating to learn from local people how best to mitigate the incredible heat whilst staying active and social (but perhaps not outdoors).

We also enjoyed a fantastic conversation with Bas Bungish and Marlon Deam from the Sports Boulevard Foundation, one of Riyadh’s mega projects in Saudi Arabia. They’re already doing an incredible job in creating opportunities for people to get active, and we can’t wait to see how things are progressing next time we’re visiting.

Closer to home, Chris and I travelled to Loughborough University on Wednesday to spend time with Mark Doidge and a number of his sport for development colleagues. Loughborough is an incredible institution, perhaps best known for its world class elite sport programmes, but they are also heavily involved in sport for development. Like so many people in this space, they are already doing incredible work and Chris and very much hope that we can develop powerful collaborations, and that we can play a role bringing people together.

And finally, for the last couple of days we’ve been finalising the details of our Community Sport Accelerator programme. Over the last year we’ve been supporting fantastic organisations such as This Woman Runs, The Man Walk Australia Incorporated, Park Yoga (well done Cathi and team on the SIA Award!), MOVE Against Cancer Charity, and I Speak Football, with the aim of best understanding how we might add value to organisations looking to scale.

Using learnings from the last 12-or-so months, we’re turning that work into a structured programme, which we hope can be supported through the CSR funds of a mission-driven company who share our passion for building communities through sport.

More on that in future weeks, but if you are aware of any company with a CSR strategy that might fit with community sport at great scale, then please do drop us a line.

📸 Aston joined a new football team recently, and it’s not taken long for me to get stuck into a little bit of pitch marking. I know that we all have different and competing time pressures and commitments, but if you do have kids participating in community sport, getting involved as a volunteer is a brilliant way to improve your own health and happiness. Don’t do what I did though and wander the 600 or so yards back to the storage container without lifting the paint roller 🤡