Paul Sackey Kicks Bullying Into Touch for ChildLine
Last week Paul Sackey, a player for London Wasps and England and an NSPCC ambassador, visited Tilehouse Combined School in Denham Green, Uxbridge to meet students and teach them about bullying. The visit was part of PRL and the NSPCC’s Kick Bullying Into Touch programme, which uses tag rugby to teach schoolchildren about bullying, its effects, and how to address it. The programme also promotes the NSPCC’s ChildLine service.
To date the Kick Bullying Into Touch has been introduced to 135 schools, and by the end of the two year pilot PRL community managers will have run the programme in 780 schools reaching 234,000 children.
Said Sackey: “You don’t always agree with your team mates, but you learn to sort out your differences in a respectful manner and make sure no one is bearing grudges as that can ruin your chances. Kids might be surprised to know this, but even some rugby players have been bullied at school. No one should put up with bullying, but you have to deal with it safely, and I hope by going into schools with ChildLine we can all make play our part in tackling bullying.”
You can watch a video of the day on BucksTV here. You can also learn more about the visit on GuinnessPremiership.com and the London Wasps’s site.
‘Connecting Communities’ with BARA
I took part in great match last week that was put on by BARA, the British Asian Rugby Association. The third annual ‘Tag Time’ event got a number of rugby legends (including Martin Offiah, Abi Ekoku, Ady Spencer, and Jason Critchley) and MPs (including Greg Mullholland MP, Andy Reed MP and Neil Turner MP) together for a match to promote the ‘Connecting Communities’ Project, which the Leeds Rugby Foundation is doing with Leeds Metropolitan University to break down cultural barriers and proactively tackle inclusion within sport. The match took place in partnership with both the All Party Parliamentary Rugby League & Rugby Union Groups, and was held at the Harelquins Stoop. You can learn more on BARA’s site here.
Danny Cipriani and the Land Rover Cup
The Land Rover Premiership Cup, a national grassroots rugby tournament for under-11s and under-12s, had its final at Twickenham this year on the same day as the Guinness Premiership Final, 16 May 2009. This video of the day shows what the kids did, and has an interview wth Danny Cipriani in which he discusses the importance of community rugby.
Esther Rantzen on ChildLine and Rugby
Premier Rugby has been working with ChildLine for quite a while now, through ‘Family Forwards’ (a fundraising campaign that raised £6000 this season, enough to answer more than 1500 children’s calls) and the ChildLine / Premier Rugby ‘Kick Bullying Into Touch’ Programme, our anti-bullying mentoring scheme that aims to turn back the tide of bullying in schools.
Founder and president of ChildLine Esther Rantzen attended the Guinness Premiership Final this past weekend, and spoke to us about ChildLine, boys and bullying, ChildLine’s Child’s Voice Appeal and the upcoming ChildLine Rocks concert.
To date, Community Managers from the Guinness Premiership clubs have introduced the ‘Kick Bullying Into Touch’ programme to 135 schools. By the end of the two year pilot, they will have run the programme in 780 schools to reach 234,000 children with anti-bullying messages. Each child will receive an information card with anti bullying messages from a player from each Premiership club including Steve Borthwick, Jonny Wilkinson and Paul Sackey.
You can learn more about the work we’re doing with the NSPCC on their site here.
Saracens is Community Club of the Year
Saracens beat off stiff opposition from Worcester Warriors and Northampton Saints to win this year’s Parliamentary Citizenship Awards yesterday. The judging panel included Derek Wyatt MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Rugby Union Group, Paul Farrelly MP and Andy Reed MP. Mark McCafferty, the Chief Executive of Premier Rugby and Miriam Sherlock, the editor of SportBusiness Magazine were also part of the panel. Here’s a video about how the day of the final.
Parliamentary CSR Awards from Glasshouse Partnership on Vimeo.
Warriors npower Inclusive Tag Programme: Video
Here’s a video about the Worcester Warriors npower Inclusive Tag Programme, which just won the Impact Award at the 2009 Citizenship Awards:
Citizenship Awards: Programme Winners
In addition to shortlisting the clubs, the judges during the first stage of the Parliamentary Citizenship Awards also chose the winners of three awards for individual programmes.
Judges at the assessment stage.
The SportBusiness CSR Award is a new award this year run in conjunction with SportBusiness magazine. It’s designed to reward the efforts of the club with the best community marketing scheme helping to generate tangible brand or business results. This year’s winner is Saracens for their two year Dance programme which has seen over 16,000 children and young people trial dance classes. The judges commended it for its ‘clear focus’, the ‘scale of its reach’ and its ability to ’meld private and public sector’ agendas.
Miriam Sherlock, the editor of SportBusiness, said:
In a particularly strong field it was the Saracens Dance programme that proved to be the most remarkable. Reaching out to those outside of rugby’s usual audience Saracens worked hard in gaining large numbers of involved youngsters in a scheme that gives positive and tangible results in increased sponsorship, ticket sales and in revenue from holiday camp schemes. As well as providing fitness and health benefits it also encouraged a strong link to the team through work with the match day cheerleaders and subsidised tickets and promotions. There is no doubt that some youngsters on this programme will become lifelong Saracens fans. A big well done to all the staff and volunteers who clearly work so hard on this.’
This was the second year for the Innovation Award, which celebrates a new community programme that deals innovatively with a community’s social (and other) needs, and for the second year Bristol Rugby won, this time for its ‘Bright Sparks’ programme. ‘Bright Sparks’ is designed to help educational establishments which have chronic issues with absenteeism and truancy. The judges were impressed by the way the programme addressed a clear need in schools, with clear goals and measurable results.
The third Individual programme award is the Impact Award, which celebrates an established programme that is clearly able to demonstrate the positive impact it’s made on a particular issue (such as health or fitness) or on a particular community. This year’s award was given to Worcester Warriors for their ‘npower Tag’ programme which is aimed at children with special needs giving them the opportunity to learn and participate in sport. The judges were impressed by the programme’s scale and by Worcester’s well-developed overall strategy for achieving community goals.
Congratulations to the winners and best of luck to the shortlisted clubs (Northampton Saints, Saracens and Worcester Warriors) will be presenting their work to the final judging panel at Parliament next week.
Club of the Year Shortlisting
It’s that time of the season again, when the clubs of the Guinness Premiership compete against one another off the pitch to show who’s making a real difference in their community. It’s the fourth annual Parliamentary Citizenship Awards! Last week a panel of judges met to shortlist the best overall clubs in the ‘Community Club of the Year’ competition, and well, I’ll let the press release speak for itself:
24 April 2009: Saracens, Northampton Saints and Worcester Warriors have been shortlisted as ‘Community Club of the Year’ in this year’s All Party Parliamentary Rugby Union Group’s annual Citizenship Awards. All three clubs were praised by judges, who included representatives from the Third Sector, for the scale, quality and focus of the work they do in their local communities with private and public sector partners.
They will go forward to a final Club of the Year ‘shoot–out’ on April 29th 2009, following a gruelling interrogation from a judging panel which will include Derek Wyatt MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Rugby Union Group, Mark McCafferty, Chief Executive of Premier Rugby, and Miriam Sherlock, editor of Sports Business magazine.
“Professional rugby union clubs are tackling the health, education and social agendas of their communities with skill and determination,” said Derek Wyatt, MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Rugby Union Group.
“The good thing is that these schemes are not just about getting kids playing rugby. Clubs are involved in dealing with crime, social exclusion and health alongside local partners and Third Sector organisations. We want charities, NGOs and others to look at rugby, not just as a tool for encouraging physical activity but as tool for solving other types of social problems.’
The winner will be announced on April 29th 2009 at an evening reception in the House of Commons.
The Parliamentary Citizenship Awards, now in their fourth year, recognise the positive impact that professional rugby clubs have on their local environment, community and society.
As well as short-listing the three clubs who go through to the Club of the Year final, the judges have made a number of other awards to celebrate different aspects of the community and social marketing work conducted by the Guinness Premiership clubs.
There will be more to share later today–so stay tuned.
Family Forwards for ChildLine
On the weekend of April 5/6, Premier Rugby will be supporting ChildLine through its new Family Forwards campaign. The goal is to get families to spend time together during a day out at the rugby, supporting ChildLine in the process.
Jonny Wilkinson lent his support, saying: “My family is really important to me and I always look forward to having time to catch up with each other, relax, and have some fun together. That’s why I’m backing the Guinness Premiership’s Family Forwards campaign to get more families to enjoy a day out at their local Guinness Premiership rugby club.”
Matches that weekend (at Bath Rugby, Leicester Tigers, London Irish, Northampton Saints, Worcester Warriors, and London Wasps) will have family fundraising activities in aid of ChildLine. You can learn more by reading the press release here or visiting ChildLine’s site here.
Responsible Holiday Drinking with Drinkaware
Just in time for the holidays, Premier Rugby has partnered up with The Drinkaware Trust to support responsible drinking. Drinkaware has a great set of tips and tools on their website showing how to drink responsibly, particularly when so many holiday parties are going on.
During week 9 of the Guinness Premiership (December 20 and 21), we’ll be helping to spread Drinkaware’s messages at matches by handing out tip cards and hosting activities to educate supporters. You can learn more about the partnership here.
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About Professional Rugby in the Community
I'm Wayne Morris, Community Manager for Premier Rugby. This blog is a place for me and the Community Development Officers from around the Guinness Premiership to share the community work our clubs are doing and talk about some of the issues we're trying to solve through sport.
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