Spotlight on PE Partner Healthy Holidays provision across Leeds!
Healthy Holidays is one of the fantastic initiatives across the city that supports Child Friendly Leeds Wish 8, by supporting families who may need it. This blog has been written by Nick Powell from PE Partner, one of the organisations who will are running Healthy Holidays clubs and provision across the city this summer.
About Wish 8
Wish 8: Leeds is a city that reduces the impact of poverty and helps families who need it.
Children, young people and families experiencing the impact of poverty feel they are supported and receive the help they need. They have their basic rights and needs met.
I was delighted to be invited to write this blog about Wish 8. It made me stop and really think about what the term ‘have their basic rights and needs met’ means.
I looked at it in the context of my own children and what I consider their basic rights to be. It’s more than food, drink and shelter; it’s having the chance to have experiences that can spark aspirations.
So, when a young single mum said “Can we stay a little longer? We don’t have a car so I never get to bring her to places like this” on one of our recent trips to the awe inspiring Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it really struck a chord with me. It helped me to realise just how important schemes like Healthy Holidays are for children who simply can’t take these things for granted.
What is PE Partner?
My company, PE Partner, has been working across Leeds for over 17 years and this is our fifth year of being a very proud partner on the Healthy Holiday scheme, which supports children on income related Free School Meals (FSM) to access experiences that their families couldn’t afford to pay for. We provide safe, fun activity camps with sport, crafts, dance and music and this year, for the first time, we’re also running a program of family coach trips. Everyone gets fed and our amazing team work hard to give the children and their families a range of really positive experiences. It’s certainly not an easy task, but it is incredibly rewarding.
Our activity clubs are a melting pot of children from all over the city and we run these as universal provision, so while some children get funding support, other children from higher earning families will pay to be there. The beauty of this is that the children don’t know, and don’t have to think about the difference, so it’s a great way of making socio-economic background as irrelevant as it should be for all children and of really levelling the playing field. Every child gets to try the same things; meet the same role models; experience the same activities; see the same art, irrespective of how much money their family has.
Why is this so important to us?
Having worked with so many children and young people we know first-hand that that the best thing you can do for any child is to show them opportunity. We see it as our role to give them a safe space to try new things and build up their self belief so that they will keep trying things until they find their own passion.
After food, drink and shelter, we firmly believe that inspiration is one of the things that should be considered a basic right in Wish 8, because if a child’s horizons are broadened, then their future is brighter.
Wish 8 is about reducing the impact of poverty. Leeds is an incredible city with an entire army of dedicated, caring people taking positive daily action to make this the best city to grow up in for every single child and we are incredibly proud to be part of that movement.
Further Information:
About PE Partner.
We’re dedicated to increasing and improving the experiences children and young people have of physical activity and we love what we do.
Every week of term over 1300 children attend our PE lessons and out of school clubs, and over 1000 children come to us for fun in the school holidays.
We support all aspects of PE, School Sport and Physical activity.
If we don’t already work with you, get in touch.
Call 01133226115, email info@pepartner.co.uk or visit www.pepartner.co.uk to find out more.
Author: Nick Powell, Managing Director, PE Partner Ltd. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-powell-16400480/
