* This video is closed captioned

This Sport Inclusion Australia case study is part of the series highlighting why grassroots sports and physical activity funding is essential to build and develop communities that encourage participants to increase their physical activity levels. 

In 2018 the Federal Government committed over $150 million to drive national sports participation and physical activity initiatives to get Australian’s moving. 

Sport Inclusion Australia was a recipient of the Sport Australia Better Ageing and Participation funding programs. With this funding they were able to work with Deaf Sports Australia, Golf Australia, Bowls Australia and Blind Sports Australia to develop new programs and resources to enable sports to be more inclusive at all levels.  

“The first submission was the Better Ageing funding and we worked with Deaf Sports Australia in that particular application and the premise was to work with Bowls Australia and Golf Australia to build their resources and capacity to be inclusive of older Australians.

“We also applied for participation funding with Blind Sport Australia and Deaf Sports Australia and that program was called ‘Leave No One Behind’ and it was initially going to be face-to-face forums but of course COVID-19 stopped that from happening,” CEO of Sport Inclusion Australia Robyn Smith said. 

With the funding Sport Inclusion Australia was able to pivot the delivery of both their Better Ageing and Participation programs to an online forum, conduct virtual meetings and create resources that they could share with more than 26 National and State Sporting Organisations. 

Being able to create up to date resources and hold forums in an ever changing COVID world enabled Sport Inclusion Australia to deliver coaches and administrators with current information to help them adapt and include all participants of their sport. 

Without the government funding Sport Inclusion Australia wouldn’t have been able to pivot and change the delivery of their Better Ageing and Participation programs to an online forum and they wouldn’t have been able to reach the large number of National Sporting Organisations (NSO) and State Sporting Organisations that they did. 

Click here to download the Sport Inclusion Australia case study.