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Partnership project helps community enterprises and disabled people get active together

6 May 2021 · Categories: Communities Care

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and Community Catalysts have partnered together to help more grassroots, smaller community enterprises benefit from Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund. The Fund aims to reduce the negative impacts of Covid-19 by supporting  more disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to get involved in sport and physical activity, thereby reducing inequalities.

Since partnering up last year, DR UK and Community Catalysts have supported ten small community enterprises to submit successful applications to the fund. Grants given out through the partnership so far total £21,964.84. Here is a small selection of the community enterprises supported:

ArtWorks South Yorkshire is a small Rotherham based Community Interest Company (CIC) who were one of the first small enterprises to receive funding from the Tackling Inequalities Fund. Since receiving their fund they have gone on to help seventy individuals with learning and physical disabilities across their three sites to become more physically active. They split their sites into bubbles to stay Covid safe, and each site is connected via a webcam and projector enabling them to deliver a series of dance, aerobic, and yoga sessions.

 

Funky Fitness and Fun CIC based in Oldham have been hosting a series of musical dance sessions and forest school activities to help their members, who have Down’s syndrome and limited mobility, to become more active.

 

“Visits to the Forest school have been a huge success.  So much so that we have actually doubled the number of visits so that more members could enjoy the facilities”

Catherine Moody – Funky Fitness Support Worker

Always Bee You, from Hertfordshire, is a small community interest company supporting adults with learning disabilities to improve their wellbeing by offering work training, social and sports activities. Always Bee You have used their award to deliver a series of fantastic fancy dress themed yoga sessions which they delivered in partnership with Yoga Antics. Their thrilling themed group sessions have ranged from Harry Potter to pyjama parties to providing bespoke 1:1 sessions for those who don’t feel comfortable leaving their homes.

The Tackling Inequalities Fund from Sport England is administered by the Get Yourself Active team at DR UK – a national Disabled People’s User Led Organisation (DPULO) and a leading charity of its kind – that works alongside disabled people and DPULOs to lead change in the social care, health and sport sectors, in order to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for disabled people – and to help them get active in a way that is right for them. Though DR UK is well connected with other user-led organisations, there was a gap in reaching small community enterprises which is where Community Catalysts’ knowledge and expertise came in.

Community Catalysts is a community interest company and social enterprise working across the UK to make sure that people who need care and support to live their lives can get help in ways, times and places that suit them – with a real choice of attractive options. Small Good Stuff is part of the Community Catalysts’ family and helps connect community enterprises that offer care and support to people who may need it. Community Catalysts linked up community enterprises from their local projects and Small Good Stuff with DR UK.

As well as helping community enterprises, the partnership also helped DR UK and Community Catalysts to create new connections and grow relationships across the wider sector.

If you would like to apply for the Tackling Inequalities Fund or find out more information, please contact the Get Yourself Active team at tacklinginequalities@disabilityrightsuk.org

    

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