Getting People Moving

As we grow Participate World over the coming years, Chris Lomax MBE and I have ambitions to achieve many different things, all of which we hope will positively contribute to the world. These range from building a great team and creating a wonderful working environment, to strengthening relationships between entire countries through the combination of diplomacy and community sport.

At the heart of everything though, is getting people active and social, in the great outdoors.

It’s easy to wander round all day talking about doing stuff, advising and perhaps criticising others, but we’re both hugely driven to ensure that our work results in actual action. And so, if we don’t help real people to do real things, together, then we will have failed.

This year then, we've been exceptionally fortunate and feel incredibly proud to have played a small part in the development of the brilliant Abu Dhabi Department of Community Development (DCD) Degayeg project. Working alongside the DCD, with Palms Sports (ADX:PALMS), Hintsa Performance, Muneer Al Mubarak, Khawla Barley, Budreya Faisal, Ross Baxter, Michael Dahdal, M.Ed. and many others, we're now seeing hundreds of people getting active every week all across Abu Dhabi. There are dedicated sessions for women and girls, sessions for people with disabilities, sessions for everyone, and activities focussed on walking, or cycling, or football, or strength, or just simply moving and socialising.

When all is said and done, we will measure ourselves against whether or not we contributed to getting people moving.

And so with that as our number one KPI, 2025 has been a great success.