Today’s theme for Women in Sport Week is ‘Active Participation’. In the spirit of this, today we are opening our ‘Bridge the Gap: Get Paddling’ Applications for the 3rd year in a row!! ‘Get Paddling’ is aimed at recruiting new female members into your club by running a beginners programme which will help your club to achieve sustainable gender diversity and balance.
Over the past two years we have heard outstanding testimonials from many clubs who have engaged in this programme – not only seeing an increase in women in their club membership, but more importantly retaining this increase in women within the club and seeing a rise in committee gender balance, and women stepping into other leadership roles in their club.
The funding will impact two areas:
- The women who volunteer their time to lead/assist in leading the programme will be sponsored by the club using the funding to subsidise their own coach/instructor qualifications.
- A beginner’s programme recruiting new women is run in the club with measures in place to ensure joining the club is easy and welcoming (read more on the application form link)
This year, the programme focus is a little different to previous years. Canoeing Ireland have seen a positive increase in gender balance over the past two years, however the diversity of this increase is not so evident in clubs. This year, we encourage clubs to engage with groups of women who are a minority within your club i.e. think about age groups, backgrounds, abilities. For some clubs, recruiting any women may be the target, for others it may be growing the junior section, or engaging with mothers who have young children for example. The application form will allow you to express your clubs needs.
Application deadline is Monday 4th April
Funding Announcement is Friday 9th April
If you have any questions please email Emer Carton: emer@canoe.ie
