British Colleges Sport recognise the importance that volunteers make to the delivery of sporting opportunities, and equally the importance of developing the next generation of volunteers, particularly through the student community. It must therefore be seen as a high priority that young people are equipped with the necessarily skills and experience that it takes to undertake a volunteering role both within their local communities and in supporting sport programmes and events.
The aspiration for the BCS Ambassador programme is therefore to inspire young people to “get involved”, tackle negative perceptions of young people by providing high profile examples of the positive contribution that young people can make, and provide opportunities available to young people to learn and develop their skills in the right environment.
Purpose
Through this project we aim to reach the following outcomes:
1. Create a network of skilled and motivated young volunteers.
2. Create a volunteer workforce that fully reflects the demographics of each BCS region
3. Create new opportunities for young people and inspire them to “get involved”.
4. Create a legacy of young volunteers throughout England, Scotland and Wales.
5. Encourage all young people involved to pursue CPD opportunities.
6. Initiate pathways of opportunities which will educate and inspire young people to progress further.
7. Encourage young people to take their training and skills into their communities by supporting activities, events and competitions for other young people through NGB’s, SSP’s, local CS clubs, and leagues/competitions.
8. Provide young people with a unique opportunity to influence and shape the development of young people as event volunteers, team managers and the creation of a legacy of young people as volunteers.
Targets
In order to meet these outcomes BCS has set ambitious targets to:
- Recruit 250 16-19 year olds per year into the BCS/FA Step into Sport programme to become volunteers, and from that 250 selecting 40 students per year to support BCS events.
- Recruit 10 volunteers per year to become national ambassadors to champion key areas of the sport development strategy.
- Enlist a young volunteer coordinator in each region from a BCS member college who will sit on the BCS regional committee and will work collaboratively with member colleges in the region to drive the recruitment and development of volunteers.
- Identify the needs for regional and national events and ensure there are deployment opportunities so that young volunteers can support at least three events in their region per academic year through the role of Regional Ambassador.
- Accrue over 2,500 volunteering hours through all young people involved in one year of the project
- Initiate event volunteering pathways that will provide a formalised structure for young people to pursue further volunteering opportunities by the time they leave college.
From Volunteer to Ambassador
Each year BCS will select from the national pool of circa 250 young leaders involved in the step into sport programme a pool of Ambassadors to represent British Colleges Sport.
These will be in two levels:
‘Regional Ambassadors’ – promising volunteers who will attend and support regional events in an ambassadorial capacity. Following their involvement the best regional ambassadors will then be invited to attend the BCS National Championships at Loughborough University to support the staging of this pinnacle event.
‘National Ambassadors’ – each year BCS will select the top ten students nationally to become the prestigious National Ambassadors. They will then follow an intensive programme of training, personal development, event experience and be the face of the leadership and volunteering programme at all levels.
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