On Friday May 17, I joined WE London colleagues Kristen Grant, Sam Whitby, Will Hall and more than 50 local community volunteers to help out at one of 13 Community Games for disadvantaged youth held simultaneously across the UK as part of the broader, Business in the Community (BITC)’s annual “Give and Gain Day.”
Community Games events are designed to inspire children to play more sport and build on Olympic legacy “By uniting community sport, business and young people into a national campaign, we are using the power of sports participation to tackle apathy, anti-social behavior and obesity.” The event mainly consisted of us shouting ourselves hoarse while coaching / cheering on a team of 14 primary school kids as they tried their hand at everything from basketball to boccia. With 250-odd 7-11 year-olds also yelling at their schoolmates to run, pass, shoot or score, it was (to put it mildly) very, very loud – a perfect (wake up) activity for the morning while socializing with colleagues.
It was brilliant fun and fantastically rewarding to see a group of kids of varying age come together as a team. We won plenty of games and even though we missed out on an overall prize, the kids were all laughing, smiling and talking positively about playing sport at the end of the day. Overall it was a really positive experience and I’d do it again in a flash – I heartily recommend events like this as a way of investing WE’s volunteer hours.”
More than 12,000+ UK business volunteers from 300 companies gave over 96,000 hours of their time as part of BITC’s Give & Gain Day 2013, as part of a global movement of thousands of volunteers across 25 countries as diverse as Spain, Iran, Nigeria and Guatemala.
