British Wrestling has been working hard to support our community Wrestling Clubs. In partnership with Sport England, British Wrestling has supported 14 clubs around England through the Together Fund.
This has helped these wrestling clubs with the regrowing their clubs after the turbulent years. This fund is a continuation of the Tackling Inequality Fund, this fund existed to reduce the negative impact of coronavirus and help community groups to grow and help more people. The Together Fund money was invested in three key audiences:
- Lower socio economic groups
- Culturally diverse communities
- Increasing female participation
Each week we will be showcasing a club and the projects they delivered using the funds.
Thanks to Sport England for their support with the fund.
Nature Warriors Wrestling Club
The project Nature Warriors (the club) proposed was to allow delivery of more sessions to the local community. In particular they aimed to deliver an additional session for their Juniors as well as a new session targeted at females from BAME backgrounds. They are based in the lowest 5% most deprived areas in the country.
The need for the project has come from the community itself with a waiting list for Junior sessions as well as consultation with females who are interested in learning a martial art mainly for self defence reasons. The area the club is based in, pendle, has a large population from ethnically diverse communities and these communities (South Asian, Refugees and Asylum Seekers) will be the primary focus of their project.
The club said: “This project allowed us to satisfy the demand for more sessions for young people allowing an extra 25 young people to join the club. For the female led sessions, we had a good turnout and there was also good attendance during these sessions”.
Female Participants
The club said: ‘At first I was a bit hesitant about joining the club, but when I joined I was pleased to see females of varying abilities including beginners like myself. I enjoyed the warmups and the fitness part of the sessions and it took me a while to get into the wrestling side – the tag wrestling helped to get us going and by the end we were starting to enjoy the wrestling element also.’
The project added 2 new sessions per week for the club. The first is a additional session of wrestling to add to the two that the club currently run. This will be tailored to juniors and will be your standard wrestling session. The club said: “The reason for this is because we are absolutely maxed out on two of our sessions and there is the demand to deliver an additional session each week. Hopefully beyond this funding period this session will become sustainable in its own right”.
British Wrestling are wrapping up the final phase of the Together Fund (to evolution of the TIF Fund). This phase has supported 14 clubs with further funds to get more people wrestling.
Our Development Manager, Andreas Michaelas says “we’re delighted to see how much the sport of wrestling has grown and developed from the support given by Sport England through the TIF and Together Fund. We’re excited to see how much more community wrestling can grow and support their local communities”.
Below in the download section, you have access to the complete case study of the TIF Fund completed in partnership with Sports Structures. Further
Any questions about the case study please contact British Wrestling Development Manager at: amichaelas@britishwrestling.org.
