Sports Inclusion Award for Mayo Sports Partnership
Date: 18-12-2020
Throughout 2020 Cara, the national body for Sports Inclusion, has been successfully piloting Xcessible Local Sports Partnership / National Governing Body Bronze Award with seven organisations; Basketball Ireland, Swim Ireland, Badminton Ireland, Cycling Ireland, Mayo Sports Partnership, Clare Sports Partnership & Kildare Sports Partnership.
Building a strong foundation for inclusion and nurturing the relationships with the Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) and National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) has always been a priority for Cara. Xcessible has been developed to help support and empower LSPs & NGBs to positively and meaningfully provide opportunities for people with disabilities to take part, sustain participation and excel in sport and physical activity. Through the Xcessible Award, Cara supported and guided the 7 NGBs & LSPs to create more opportunities through coaching, participation, volunteering, officiating, and high performance while building a strong strategic platform for inclusion within each of the organisations.
Xcessible is three staged resourced pathway designed to ease an NGB or LSP into the area of Inclusion and support them through the process of developing and increasing their capacity to support people with disabilities within the sport and physical activity environments. The main purpose of the programme is to enable NGBs & LSPs to function inclusively with limited support from specialist agencies and to enable them to realise their vision of inclusion and to understand & reflect on their current provisions and philosophy of inclusion for people with disabilities. The next stage in the journey for these organisations will be to progress to the silver award in 2021 and onwards eventually to achieve gold recognition.
Xcessible has been developed by using the Sport Inclusion Disability Charter as a guiding tool. The seven organisations were guided through the bronze award under the headings of Openness, People, Activities, Facilities, and Promotion supported by Cara through each area and set realistic and manageable goals and deadlines. Each organisation was required to provide evidence of their work and journey and presented to the Xcessible panel at the end of November on their experiences, results, and outcomes of their work completed in line with the objectives of the Xcessible Award.
Commenting on the success of Xcessible Cara’s Strategic Operations Manager Brenda O’Donnell said: “Congratulations to Clare Sports Partnership, Mayo Sports Partnership Kildare Sports Partnership & Basketball Ireland who have achieved bronze status for the Xcessible Award in 2020, we look forward to continuing to support Badminton Ireland, Swim Ireland & Cycling Ireland to complete their final few tasks on their Xcessible Bronze journey and to achieve bronze status in early 2021”
Mayo Sports Partnership Chairman Cllr Michael Loftus added “ This award is a tribute to the hard working staff of Mayo Sports Partnership who continually strive to include people of all abilities in their programmes. Special mention to Sports Inclusion Disability Officer Ray Mc Namara who leads out on these initiatives and who co-ordinated the application process”
Over 500 people with a disability participate in 20 Sports Inclusion Programmes annually with many of these initiatives small in number but high in impact on the individuals health and wellbeing. Stressing the importance of collaborating with local agencies and disability services Sports Partnership head Charlie Lambert stated “ Without the co-operation of local partners supplying volunteers, transport, equipment and facilities we just would not be able to provide the level of participation opportunities we do. Its all down to working in partnership and we are particularly thankful for the close working relationship we have with all stakeholders in the provision of these opportunities”
To find out more about CARA go to https://caracentre.ie/
Details of Mayo Sports Partnerships Sports Inclusion Programme can be found here https://www.mayo.ie/sports-partnership/programmes/disability-sport Any queries on Mayo Sports Partnerships Sports Inclusion Programme can be forwarded to Sports Inclusion Disability Officer Ray Mc Namara Tel: 094 9064362 or email msp@mayococo.ie.