Last week The Active Essex Foundation held their first ever Power of Sport and Youth Crime Prevention Conference at Colchester United Community Stadium. The conference helped develop conversations around the importance of using sport to reduce anti - social behaviour. Keynote speakers and workshop leads were able to address the delegates by explaining their role in sport intervention and their own personal stories. Keynote speakers Roger Hirst, Alan Webster, Fatima Whitbread and Graham Helm captured the audience with their speeches and the Foundation team were honoured to have them attend.
New Chairman Bob Mclintock opened the conference with a warm welcome and throughout the day introduced the locally trusted organisations onto the stage for their ‘spotlight-on’ sessions. These sessions allowed organisations to highlight their work and give examples of how different activities have been beneficial for young people in Essex to steer them away from anti – social behaviour.
Workshops were delivered across morning and afternoon sessions, delivered by various speakers and organisations. With 6 different workshops taking place, they allowed delegates to gain a better understanding of what barriers young people face and how we can use physical activity and sport as an effective tool to enhance positive outcomes. The Foundation team made sure workshops deepened attendees thinking and allowed time to share and learn from their own experiences and challenges faced.
We had 21Up attend to capture V-log content and ensured delegates could talk to young people about their journey – plus we had 1-Up from Basildon who attended with young people to share their stories and impact of physical activity. These were perhaps the most powerful pieces of the day, because it built upon what we heard in keynote speeches and workshops, but delegates could hear straight from the young people about how physical activity and these interventions have changed their life course.
Everyone at the Active Essex Foundation would like to thank those who spoke and attended the conference, for what was an important step in bringing together our networks to be able to create change in the community, and work collectively to enhance interventions involving sport and physical activity.
Conference resources here
