London Grilling: Tom Dixon, Volunteer Community Sports Coach, speaks to Delancey Real Estate about Access Sport
Tom Dixon
My name is Tom Dixon and I part of the Team at Access Sport. I’ve worked for charities for many years, but as a volunteer community sports coach in my spare time, I know how important Access Sports work is for children and young people. With children’s health and mental health deteriorating overall in the UK, sport is an essential tool to help them through the toughest times in life.
Tell us all about the Access Sport initiative
Access Sport is a national charity founded in 2004. We believe that no one should be excluded from the transformational benefits of community sport. The benefits we focus on are, Physical and Mental Health and Well-Being, Personal Development including Life Skills and Prospects, Sense of Belonging and Community Engagement. Although we are a national charity, we work on specific projects in London that uses sport as a tool to support disadvantaged and disabled children and young people.
How does Access Sport impact local communities across London?
We train, equip and support community sports clubs, organisations and volunteers to provide inclusive sport and physical activity, unleashing their potential to transform the lives of underserved young people in their local communities. Through our social inclusion cycling work, we create facilities, clubs and outreach programmes in the most deprived areas of London.
“I am scared to think what I would be doing without the club. They give me a focus that I never had. ”
Through our disability inclusion work in London we are giving the opportunity to disabled children and young people to experience sport where there has been nothing for them before. We provide disability inclusion training to clubs and volunteers and create sustainable sports offers in those communities to continue to engage those children and their families.
How do you go about tackling the access barriers faced by disadvantaged and disabled young people?
We need to know what the barriers are first, and through nearly 20 years of experience and talking to local communities especially the children and young people who benefit from our work we find out what the issues are and what is preventing participation and why. We will then work with local community groups, other charities, local authorities, schools, the Police and others to create meaningful and sustainable sports offers. Barriers can include cost to participate, or knowledge of club leaders and volunteers in how to reach or interact with certain members of the community (for example disabled children). Access Sport will use our experience and knowledge to help the local community to tackle these barriers and then advertise the sports within the community.
What are your long-term goals for the charity?
We want every child and young person from deprived backgrounds or who are disabled to experience the transformational benefits of community sport. Therefore, we want to work with more sports, in more locations. In London we have a focus on certain boroughs, because of funding constraints so we are looking to grow to new boroughs over the next few years. We have developed an ambitious growth strategy where we want to increase our reach from supporting around 8,000 children now across the UK, to over 50,000 in 5 years time. Ambitious, but much needed!
How can people get involved in Access Sport?
There are lots of ways to get involved. You can give money to help expand our programmes and reach through our website or take part in our prize draw this March and maybe win an incredible prize such as a trip to the Paris Olympics! Take part in a running event and raise money for children and young people or give up your time by volunteering for a community club or at an Access Sport organised outreach event.
“Finally, a club that welcomes my son, where he can have fun and make friends. ”
Describe your perfect day out in London.
Taking in the sights of the city! I did the Duck Tours a few years ago, touring both the sights of the land and the river was brilliant, a great day out learning about the city and it’s rich history. If you combine this with taking in a sporting event and one of our amazing venues, then you have the perfect day out!
