Women’s Sport Week: Get Out Get Active women- Kat’s story
Women’s Sport Week will this year take place between 19- 25 June. Although the campaign comes before a packed summer of elite sport, the Get Out Get Active (GOGA) programme is making waves at grassroots level across the UK. To mark the week, GOGA is celebrating some of the fantastic women working on the programme. Today, in our final article for the week, we hear from Kat, who is the GOGA Programme Manager.
GOGA, funded by Spirit of 2012, is an exciting new programme that supports disabled and non‑disabled people to take part in fun and inclusive activities together. It aims to make activity more appealing for everyone. Working in 18 different areas across the UK, partners are delivering over 30,000 sessions over three years.
The Women’s Sport Week campaign encourages the public to have fun and celebrate this vintage summer of women’s sport by watching, listening, volunteering and taking part in sporting activities. Those involved hope the campaign generates debate and encourages people to show their support, in order to help more women and girls reach their full potential through sport.
Kat Southwell, GOGA Programme Manager at the English Federation of Disability Sport
I manage the GOGA programme across the UK on behalf of all programme partners. It’s my responsibility to ensure that we reach all of the programme objectives and we make the most of the investment from Spirit. Typically, on a day to day basis you’ll find me supporting our local and national partners with their delivery, sharing best practice across the network and with external organisations. Also, creating resources and materials to help us maximise the impact of this investment.
With GOGA we have a real opportunity to try different things to reach those least active disabled and non-disabled people. I hope that were able to share learning, pilot models of delivery and create new partnerships that will help us and others to more effectively reach those with greatest need through physical activity.
I’m motivated to be active by anything that provides me with a bit of a challenge, an opportunity to learn a new skill or gives me more time outside! Amongst other things, I’m a long time member of Bath Rugby Ladies with over 150 playing appearances.
Being part of this team is extremely important to me as it keeps me active, provides constant challenge and is an opportunity to learn new things. It never fails to make me smile but perhaps most of all it has introduced me to a great a group of friends. You can’t really compare the feeling of always knowing that you have 22+ other people that will always be there for you on and off the pitch!
Many people think being active means playing sport or doing strenuous exercise in a sports hall or gym. But, there are small changes that we could make in everyday life to help us and others move more and become more active. We all have the potential to learn to love being active and I know that GOGA will provide the chance for those that we work with to do so.