RYA awarded further £150,000 of Tackling Inequalities Funding

The RYA has been awarded a further £150,000 of National Lottery funding from Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund which aims to help reduce the negative impact of Covid-19 and the widening of the inequalities in sport and physical activity.

Non-profit organisations and RYA OnBoard and Sailability venues in England are once again invited to apply for grants of up to £10,000 that will be used for projects which engage with:

  • Lower socio-economic groups
  • Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities
  • Disabled people
  • People with long term health conditions

“In the last round we awarded 19 venues and we’re hugely grateful to Sport England for making this funding available to sailing projects once again. It’s been another very tough six months for grassroots sport but we’re now beginning to see the impact that this funding can have” says Rob Clark, RYA director of sport development.

Plymouth Youth Sailing Club was awarded £10,000 for its work helping disadvantaged people in its local area including refugees and asylum seekers. Adrian Kemp says the funding came at a ‘pivotal’ time for the club.

“It has enabled us to recruit an additional member of staff to support our volunteers in the delivery of a dedicated programme for both the BAME community and young people who have suffered from isolation during the pandemic. Without this additional outreach funding, it would have been impossible to have established this programme straight out of lockdown,” says Kemp.

Sailability@Whitefriars has used its funding to run winter training for volunteers and carers, enabling it to restart activity by remotely assisting and shadowing sailors.

The deadline for venues to submit completed application forms with supporting project plans is 26 May 2021.

“We know there are more organisations who will want to use this opportunity to deliver fantastic projects to these communities,” says Clark. “Within our audiences, there’ll be groups who’ve found it harder to return to activity so we’re particularly interested in projects which can address this, for example people who require greater levels of physical support to be active or those who have been subject to long-term considerable levels of Covid-19 restrictions.”

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