As part of AoC Sport's This Girl Can programme, East Lancashire Learning Group ran a student-led week of adapted, girls-only activities designed and shaped by student voice, to engage students on their campus in physical activity.
Why did you start your initiative?
We decided to focus on the AoC This Girl Can programme, mainly due to the demographic and recognising the needs of the students at the Nelson site.
Prior to recruitment, we had already faced some challenges, trying to create a comfortable and safe environment for our female students to be physically active away from any male presence. We introduced changes such as the installation of blinds on the gym windows, female only and female led gym sessions.
We felt having a student voice would help us to overcome even more of these barriers that our female students may face.
One of the main events we ran was our This Girl Can takeover event– This was tied onto International Women’s Day.
We chose specific sessions throughout the week that were already on the Extra-curricular timetable and made them female only for the week.
The build up to the takeover involved a signup process where our female Extra-Curricular team members and Ambassador invited students to pop into our pop up This Girl Can style room and sign up for the sessions they wanted to attend.
The room contained lots of This Girl Can promotion and campaign messaging, inspirational quotes and videos from sportswomen and famous women in history.
Once signed up, students were given a goodie bag including free sanitary products, some chocolate and sweet treats.
On the week of the sessions, every girl that attended received a free pair of Modibodi Period underwear provided by our Health & Wellbeing team – aiming to help girls feel more comfortable taking part in activity during their menstrual cycle.
How did you understand what people wanted?
Through engagement with students over lunchtimes, using face to face conversations and Microsoft forms.
We encouraged conversations during tutorial times and the ideas/information was fed back to us from their tutors.
We had staff instigating conversations during our girls only gym sessions and our ambassadors would engage with their peers during breaks, lunchtimes and during classes where allowed.
This helped us build a clear picture of what activities girls wanted.
How did you promote your activities?
We promoted our activities through our Extra-Curricular and College social media accounts.
Internally, we used our digital-screens, A-boards and noticeboards to provide as much information as possible across the colleges.
Emails were distributed regularly to all students with detailed information and links to book if required.
We also used Tutor notices to ensure all information was provided to Tutors and then disseminated to all students during their tutorial.
Impact
During our first event – We were able to engage 142 girls participating in an activity for the first time. The breakdown across the week:
- Monday: Archery (20), Netball (11)
- Tuesday: Self Defence (14), Multisport (4), Gym (4)
- Wednesday: Multisport (28)
- Thursday: Multisport (25) Darts (6)
- Friday: Gym (21)
This showed us not only the demand for female only sessions but also the importance of creating safe spaces where girls feel comfortable trying something new.
How did you overcome challenges?
Initially, we faced quite a lot of barriers whilst trying to get this off the ground.
One of the largest challenges we faced was ultimately the expectations of the demographic of young people within the Nelson site.
Many conversations we had with some of the South Asian and Muslim girls, was that their parents expected them to be in college and to be learning, they didn’t want them “wasting their time” in Extra-Curricular and physical activity.
Some students had male siblings in the college and the fear of being seen, then this being fed back to parents was a genuine concern.
As both colleges are in deprived communities, many students heavily rely on transport. College buses arrive on site at 4pm, which made any after college activity almost impossible to engage a large percentage of the participants.
We had to rethink our approach to ensure we could overcome these barriers. We started by identifying which activities we could deliver over a lunch period to ensure they were as accessible as possible.
Students were able to book privately or drop into sessions providing there was availability.
We worked hard to ensure that the areas being used were closed off to public – sometimes this meant using the far end of the sports hall with the curtains across and covering up the windows in the doors.
What are your plans moving forward?
With a new cohort of ambassadors this year, we wanted to continue the success of last year’s take over event, not only replicate it but hopefully keep building on it.
We have 3 fantastic ambassadors this year who have not only been constantly engaging with students to ensure we are providing the right activities in the right place at the right time but are also coming up with their own additions.
This year during our signup day, we used the time and space we had with groups to do a little engagement.
We found that “sport” or a specific activity could be off putting for certain students.
We asked what sort of things they did during their lunch break and found many just walked to the refectory for food and to talk to friends!
So, we had the idea of creating the “Steps & Socials” group which has begun to take off. Led by our ambassadors, the group meet once a week at lunchtime and go on a local walk to get some lunch and then head back.
We found that this was a way to get those girls who may not particular be into sport or wanting to engage in a college activity to become physically active without realising. The group has recently began and is continuing to slowly grow.
We want to continue to champion student voice, creating an environment for co-design and creation across the programme. We want to continue sustainability by recruiting 1st year students who will be willing to spend their second year supporting and working with the new ambassadors to help build on the fantastic work they have already done.
Top Tip
I think the biggest tip I could give is to keep these programmes as student led as possible These girls are facing these barriers every day, so who best to help break them down?
My second tip is to get the buy-in and backing of other members of staff and management to really promote these opportunities to the students.
Whether just through tutorial or by physically bringing a group of girls down to your event or sessions.
How does the work of East Lancashire Learning Group embody the action area 'Safe'?
This project strongly embodies the safe action area, as creating genuinely safe spaces for girls to be physically active has been at the heart of our approach.
Creating not only closed off spaces, but spaces with female only staff, other female students who understand each other’s challenges and barriers in which they can overcome together, every element has been built around ensuring girls feel comfortable, understood and free from judgement.