OnSide Youth Zones join forces with Seashell Trust to host memorable inclusive sports event for over 60 young people
Last month saw the first OnSide CADS Inter Youth Zone event take place, with over 60 young people with a disability or an additional need coming together for a fun day of sport and musical activities.
The hugely successful day was run in partnership with project partner, the Seashell Trust at their fantastic venue in Cheadle, Stockport.
The unique fun-filled event formed part of the A Level Playing Field project – a unique partnership between OnSide, the Youth Zones and the Seashell Trust, which aims to support over 1,200 disabled young people, aged 8-25 year olds.
The project was launched back in January 2014 to address issues of limited facilities or services close to home for families with disabled children. The focus of the project is for the OnSide Youth Zones to get disabled young people involved in inclusive sports and recreational activities such as football, badminton, basketball, climbing, dancing and creative activities that leads to increased confidence, fitness, making friends and skills to independence.
The Seashell Trust are a charity specialising in the needs of children and young people with the most complex communication difficulties and their award-winning Children’s Able and Disabled Sport (CADS) event gave young people with a disability their time in the spotlight and highlighted the fact that ALL young people can!
The day saw young people from all of the ALPF projects enjoy activities such as swimming, tennis, football, sensory games and music and Stephen Pearson, OnSide’s A Level Playing Field Project Co-coordinator, believes all young people should have the opportunity to take part in sport. He commented on the success of the day:
“It was such an inspiring event. The young people really bought into the fun of the day and made friendships for life. We believe that ‘every young person can’ which is why bringing young people together from across the OnSide network of Youth Zones to have a day’s event was so significant for the ‘A Level Playing Field Project’.
The ALPF project is currently being rolled out across the OnSide Youth Zone Network.
For specific information on the events or to register your interest to become a volunteer, please contact the Mahdlo team on 0161 624 0111 or info@mahdloyz.org
You can get involved by tweeting @OnSideYZ or @Mahdloyz with the hashtag #YoungPeopleCan on social networking site Twitter.