President’s Awards 2024

Community Project of the Year

‘Stephen Proctor’ Community Project Of The Year

BRING IT ON BRUM!

Bring It On Brum was celebrated for their community impact at the GF President’s Awards. The Stephen Proctor Award for Community Project of the Year was presented to Matt James from Street Games to highlight the work that Bring It On Brum has achieved alongside the Golf Foundation since 2021.

The award was part of the President’s Awards at Wentworth Club, hosted by Nick Dougherty as part of a fantastic week at the BMW PGA Championship. Read more about our President’s Awards 2024 here

Bring It On Brum’s work with the Golf Foundation has seen four years of impact introducing golf and mental wellbeing to children from deprived areas around Birmingham. The joint initiative has seen golf introduced to more than 2,000 youngsters across 28 local youth and faith groups, and culminated each year in a celebratory festival bringing more than 100 participants together.

Birmingham as a city has the highest levels of children and young people eligible for benefit-related free school meals in England, with over 70,000 entitled to support.

Bring it on Brum is the largest Holiday Activity & Food programme in England, supporting children and young people who are eligible for free school meals, and is designed to ensure participants eat healthily, increase activity levels and take part in engaging and enriching activities over the school holidays. The various holiday clubs offer a safe environment for children, ensuring they don’t become socially isolated.

After the successful introduction of Golf for the first time to the programme in 2021, the Golf Foundation teamed up with StreetGames to continue to develop the access to, and sustained participation of golf.

As part of last Summer’s programme, the Golf Foundation trained members of staff from 16 community organisations to deliver safe, inspiring sessions as part of their HAF delivery. In addition to this, Golfway equipment was provided to aid delivery of sessions. Golf activity took place across 20 sites during the holidays and culminated in a festival at Cannon Hill Park in the centre of Birmingham, which was attended by Golf Foundation ambassador Nicola Bennett.

319 young people were reached and experienced golf last summer, aged between four and 15 years of age. Of these 319 children, 70% of those were from an ethnically diverse background, while 45% were girls and 14% had a disability.

With over 26,000 young people engaged across 277 holiday clubs in 2021, there is a huge scope for developing the relationship between Bring It On Brum and the Golf Foundation, and getting golf clubs in the hands of more children from impoverished backgrounds where access to the game is limited and extremely challenging.

“Working with the Golf Foundation to provide opportunities for children in Birmingham to play golf for the first time has been brilliant for the programme,” said Matt James from Street Games earlier this year. “The offer is creative and can be flexible to include groups that wouldn’t normally consider golf as an option. We’re working with children and families from some of the most deprived and underserved areas in the country, and it’s been incredible to reach so many of them and allow them to try something different. The Golf Foundation really have set the standard in terms of an innovative offer that engages the community. We’re absolutely delighted to receive this award, but huge credit goes to the Golf Foundation team themselves, and in particular the great work of Tom Sparks who has helped drive this programme on in recent years. The most impressive thing is the work that has gone in to train others, which means this project is sustainable. Hopefully it will now be in place for years to come, and together we can help it to grow!”

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