Proud of Barnsley

If you haven’t already seen on our social media Grassroots Sports Academy (GSA Community CIC) has been nominated for the Proud of Barnsley award in the Charity Organisation category!

The Proud of Barnsley awards are organised by the Barnsley Chronicle and take place every year at the Metrodome. It’s a night to celebrate all the amazing work that the people of Barnsley are doing day-to-day to help our community. Therefore, Grassroots Sports Academy CIC has been recognised.

What we do:

There’s a few reasons we were been nominated in the Charity Organisation category. But mainly it was for everything we do in our community. As you’ll have heard us mention, we run free sessions in a few of our local care homes. Our coach David Wilkinson spends so much time raising as much money as he can to keep these sessions going. Whether it be through business sponsorships or through fundraisers (he’s just rode a 170 mile bike ride!) he’s always working extra hard.

We host our care home initiatives to make sure care home residents are keeping healthy, both mentally and physically. Our team are smiling faces they see every week, they’re someone to talk to, people to look forward to seeing. We love our care home sessions so much and it’s a privilege to be trusted by all the care homes we work in.

David also runs our Bears Den sessions. David has always been keen to push for more affordable and better mental heath help in communities and with his love of fitness Bears Den was created. He hosts both normal gym sessions and also free 8-week mental health bootcamps where people can come to spend time with people, talk to new people and help their fitness improve. All of which in turn aids their mental health. David is changing peoples lives through sport and physical activity. The Bears Den family has grown to full classes and sold out 8-week programmes.

Following on from this, as everyone knows throughout the year we also organise and host HAF camps for our local schools. When we first started organising these camps we we’re only working within a handful of schools, but now we’ve been able to make our way into not only more Barnsley schools but also all the way into Doncaster. By working alongside our local councils we’re able to make sure our camps are inclusive to everyone regardless of financial situation by offering children on free school meals free places into all our camps. Not only are children getting free sport sessions but we also make sure they’re getting a hot meal, fruit and a drink. We’ve always believed all children should have access to sport regardless of their abilities or financial situation, and this is just one way we strive to ensure this is happening in your local schools all year round. For children, we also run our free community sessions. Grassroots in the Park, North East Plan and our Metrodome events are some examples where we’re making sport inclusive for everyone. These are also some of our favourite initiatives

What we’re striving to do:

We’re still on the push to make sport inclusive to everybody. It’s a goal we’ll always try to strive for, no matter how much we do. We’ll always believe we can do more. We can always raise more money and make our way into more care homes. We can always be present in more schools. We can always put on more events and sessions in more areas. This is one of the amazing things about being nominated, we’re being recognised and because we’re being recognised the things we’re working towards and the communities we’re working in are also being recognised. We’re bringing communities together through sport and being recognised means we can carry on doing so because what we’re doing now is working!

We can’t believe we were nominated. We’re so grateful to be where we are, but we also know there’s so much more to be done! But for now, we want to say thank you for helping us get here. Congratulations to everybody who has been nominated.