Introduction
Sports contribute immensely to the identity of a community and serves as a focal point of achievement, pride and engagement. The diversity of sporting activities and sports offers the potential of reaching to women and men from every age group, socio-economic and cultural background. The benefits of sports to a community goes beyond the derived personal benefits from participation in sports. The paper will point out one example of how the sport is introduced and delivered in a community environment and give a summary that is evaluative of how I makes contributions to the overall purposes of sports development. It will focus in Wales in the United Kingdom as the reference country.
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Mentro Allan is a sports initiative based in Wales and is a good example of how sports are delivered in a community environment. This initiative was conceived for evidence collection on the efficacy of the designed interventions of increasing levels of moderate and low physical activity and sports amongst the people who were sedentary previously, through the use of the natural environment (Sports Wales 2015).
The program was managed by many partners led by sports Wales. Other partners included Welsh Local Government Association, Public Health Wales, Countryside Council for Wales and Wales Council for Voluntary Action. The local partners set up and run fifteen projects across Wales with an aim of increasing physical activity amongst the groups targeted. These groups targeted comprised young women, young people at disengagement risk, low-income people, older people, physical and learning disable persons, carers, mentally ill persons, ethnic minority communities and the rurally isolated people.
These implemented support projects were tailor made, designed and delivered for a lifestyle change. They signed a contact with their targeted members, understood their needs, gave them physical activities, sporting activities and assisted them in establishing a regular pattern of sporting and physical activities (Mentro Allan 2015). Furthermore, through these projects under Mentro Allan, they supported the participants in their transition towards active lifestyles that are sustainable and independent from the projects. Furthermore, Mentro Allan (2015) indicated that each of the projects under Mentro Allan used an experimental approach where testing was done through observations and dialogue with the members was done. This was helpful for the practical strategies that were successful to be honed through feedback of the user.
Mentro Allan (2015) pointed out that the most fundamental element for delivering of sports in the community, and the program as a whole was a partnership. Given that Mentro Allan was a pioneering initiative that focused on the “hard to engage” and “hard to reach” sedentary people, one of the major challenges that the program has faced has been to forge many new structures of partnerships and to make them work strategically and practically. This challenge has proved to be a turbulent experience, complex and dynamic. However, while few of these partnerships at times have struggled, most of them have developed into mechanisms that are effective for sharing resources and expertise, and many have endured and evolved as Mentro Allan reaches its phase of sustainability.
To increase young people in Neath Port Talbot participation in sports and physical activities, Mentro Allan offered adventure sports such as canoeing, climbing, mountain biking. Additionally, the project provided conservation and environmental activities such as stonewalling and nature walk to teach and engage young people with their local environment.
Lastly, the national partnerships established regular workshops for encouraging coordinators of the projects to share what their learned and ideas. This has been useful as they get to learn from other projects and maximize their impacts of activities
Evaluative summary
The aim of the evaluation is to make an assessment of whether Mentor Allan program is meeting its aims and to examine what can work in increasing sporting and physical activity amongst the participants experiencing barriers to their participation.
- It is estimated that program during the first year activities engaged with about 5110 people, and in total has had contact with about 9739 people (Sports Wales 2015).
- The program has also been successful in engaging the participants from the groups targeted. Almost a quarter of the subjects has some disability of different forms, and a third were from the minority communities. Lastly, more than 60% of them were female participants
- The program was also successful in targeting the people who are sedentary to join sporting activities
- The participants who were involved with the programs and its different projects after six months demonstrated an increase in their usage of outdoor for sports and physical activities
- The people who were somewhat inactive, reported an original level of activity of less than three days with moderate to vigorous physical activity for more than 30 minutes, had a higher likelihood of increasing their physical activity after contact with 612 months with Mentor Allan. Among those who finished the forms for physical activity level, 41% shows that they had improved their sporting and physical activity to 3 or more days of vigorous or moderate physical activity for 30 minutes in a week.
References
Mentro Allan, (2015). About Mentro Allan. [online] Mentroallan.co.uk. Available at: http://www.mentroallan.co.uk/about-mentro-allan.html [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].
Sports Wales, (2015). Mentro Allan | Research & Policy | Sport Wales – Chwaraeon Cymru. [online] Sport.wales. Available at: http://sport.wales/research–policy/research-themes/mentro-allan.aspx [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].
