This week, Goalball UK are celebrating National Inclusion Week and participating in work behind the scenes to help make our sport more inclusive! 

 This year’s theme is #ThePowerOfNow so we will be highlighting some of the excellent work taking place throughout the goalball community while thinking about the actions we can continue to take to be inclusive to all. 

Inclusive Employers have launched a guide to the “NIW Daily Actions”, which aims to help workplaces celebrate National Inclusion Week every day. 

Below are just some of the initiatives we have in place to promote inclusivity within the goalball community.

Featured Thursday 

Every Thursday we shine the spotlight on a member of the goalball community. Whether it’s a player, coach, official or one of the Goalball UK staff team we are proud to tell everyone about the brilliant people involved in our sport. 

You can read up on past Featured Thursdays here or request to feature yourself! 

This Girl Can UK project group 

We’re keen to improve opportunities for women and girls in goalball in the UK. Recently we received funding from Sport England to set up a This Girl Can project group to develop initiatives and deliver them across the next two years. 

We reached out to the goalball community to recruit a team to build the project and look forward to working with people with lived experience of the issues that might prevent women and girls from being involved. 

Improving digital accessibility 

Goalball is played by blind and partially sighted people who require accessible websites, information, content and social media to feel truly included in our sport. 

As a minimum we ensure that Alt Text is always used, and we use correct document layout with headings ordered correctly. 

All our staff are trained in VI awareness so we can best support the goalball community at events and ensure everyone has the best experience possible. 

We know we aren’t perfect. Recently we have received funding from National Lottery Awards for All supporting us in improving the accessibility of our digital communications and website. We’re also going to be working with an external expert to ensure every document is accessible to all too, from spreadsheets to presentations. 

The True Athlete Project

We’ve joined forces with four other National Governing Bodies to create a pioneering Wellbeing Partnership.  

Our partnership with Archery GB, Boccia England and England Handball will work together over three years on a series of initiatives designed to nurture the wellbeing of young people. The project has been funded by Sport England and epitomises Sport England’s “Unite the Movement” mission. 

The partnership is led by The True Athlete Project (TAP) – a charity that aims to build a more compassionate world through sport. The TAP team will deliver mindfulness training for athletes, a mentoring programme that matches athletes across sports, and a holistic course of development for leaders and coaches, which will help them build environments where every athlete can flourish. 

We hope you are inspired to drive inclusion within your goaball community this week.