[WiLT] Sport England - Women in disadvantaged communities or caring for children under 16 - 5 Feb 2010

[WiL Admin]

Sport England - Women in disadvantaged communities and women caring for children
under 16

Sport England’s themed rounds of National Lottery funding tackle gaps in
sporting participation, to complement their other funding programmes.

They are planning to run up to three themed rounds in each year of their current
funding strategy.

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 their two highlighted groups. They
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 one of their other funding programmes, such as the
Small Grants Fund.

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 they 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 they would prefer not to waste your time,
effort and money in creating and submitting applications that are likely not to
be supported.

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

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 their investment through this themed round of funding and
maximise its impact, they 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.

They welcome initial applications from organisations looking to receive funding
from our Active Women Themed Round. This first stage of applications will close
at 5pm on 3 February 2010.The application process for all of our Themed Rounds
of funding will be two-stage and competitive.

Initial assessment by Sport England will be completed by April 2010, with
Deadline for receipt of full bids is 5pm on 16 July 2010 and Notification of
decisions in September 2010.

If you have a query on the Active Women Themed Round please contact Sport
England Tel: 08458 508 508 Full details are on

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