Northern CSPs collaborative campaign to encourage more women into coaching

Northern CSPs collaborative campaign to encourage more women into coaching

County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) in the North of England are embarking on an awareness campaign to encourage more women into coaching.

Currently only 30% of the coaching workforce are women and the percentage of women coaches receiving a qualification each year is 17%.

The Pass On Your Passion campaign involves a total of 13 CSPs and aims to raise the profile of women coaches, as well as inspiring more female participants into coaching.

GreaterSport – the CSP for Greater Manchester – originally piloted Pass On Your Passion in 2016. They identified 40 women coaches passionate about coaching and sent each of them an athletics relay baton. The coaches were then asked to pass on their baton to a female participant from their session – the handover symbolising a welcome to the world of coaching. The participant was then encouraged to register their details with GreaterSport for future coaching opportunities. Out of 40 handovers nearly half resulted in successful registrations.

The second edition of Pass On Your Passion will follow a similar format, but this time the campaign will be going on a 14 week tour, with each CSP taking a turn hosting the campaign for a week.

Jane Gardiner, Development Manager of Workforce at GreaterSport, commented: "It was great to see so many female coaches involved in the last campaign. By teaming up with the other CSPs in the North, we hope to inspire and engage more women into coaching through increased support and awareness of the campaign."

The date for GreaterSport (Greater Manchester) is 1-7 May.

Amy Hughes, founder of The 53 Foundation – which she began after running 53 marathons in 53 consecutive days, will be handing over the baton from GreaterSport to Yorkshire Sport on the 8th of May. Amy will be setting off from the Etihad Campus and will pass over the baton at the top of Holme Moss.

The campaign will return to Greater Sport on the 31-6 August, where it will finish.
Why not contact your local CSP, from the list above, to see what events they are putting on for the campaign. If you’re a coach you can contact your CSP to register for a baton or nominate a participant to receive one.

If you have any women in coaching stories that you would like to share as part of Pass On Your Passion send them to Reach: reach@sportscoachuk.org – Sports Coach UK’s brand for encouraging more women into coaching.