Aberdeen AAC’s holiday camps are a staple of summer activity for children in the area and to support children of lower socio-economic backgrounds, they provide free spaces for some of their athletes.
Aside from this, the club currently runs a community programme, delivering free athletics during the week in areas of high deprivation in the city, in the Decile 1 and 2 of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). This includes taking them away from difficult to access areas such as athletics tracks.
The club applied for funding through Athletics Trust Scotland’s Transforming Lives grant to support the extension of this community programme to their summer camps, making them accessible to all children.
Athletics Trust Scotland granted funds to Aberdeen AAC to deliver this programme, which has been met with a positive response.
“We wanted with this grant to be able to invite these children to participate in the summer camp at Aberdeen Sports Village, so at an athletics track with a long jump pit, with a high jump mat, etc. because we’re getting them to take part in athletics, but they’ve not had that opportunity of the full thing,” said Aberdeen AAC Club Manager, Jane Davidson.
Bringing Athletics to the Children
We were delighted to fund the summer camps to ensure these children had the opportunity to continue being active over the school holidays, with 40 children registered and the vast majority then attending.
This decision was made as the club looked at their membership statistics and realised there was a low turnout amongst those from D1 and D2 SIMD areas, with the track situated in one of these areas.
“The initial idea was to go into these areas and increase the opportunity for them to try athletics,” said Jane.
“That’s a really long process to kind of get the full circle. We’ve had a few club members come through, however, the camp was a really good opportunity for familiarisation of the track setting, which is another step in getting closer to feeling like they belong at the track, and could become a club member.
“It‘s primary school children that we’re dealing with, so I feel like it’s not quite ingrained in them yet, that culture. It’s important for us to go in and show them that athletics is fun and is cool.”
Creating Opportunities Off the Track
Jane, who is an international athlete and sits sixth on the Scottish all-time list in the women’s 100m hurdles, coaches at the sessions and likes to act as a role model along with other young coaches to show the appeal of athletics.
There is also a push to recruit local volunteers, including from secondary schools, with a pathway to become coaching assistants and possible employment opportunities. She adds that she has been proud to see these young people gain confidence as coaches, and shares her pride over children continuing to turn up.
“Success for us, is just that each week they’re coming back,” said Jane, “I think that sounds so basic, but for some of these kids, their one hour athletics with us each week might be the only extracurricular that they do.
“When I launched the summer camps last year, you never know how it’s going to go, so to see such large numbers from the community register to come to the Sports Village for the camp was really great for all our coaches to see.
“I think we were just as excited as they were to kind of see them come to the track. They were like in awe of what this is. This is like what we’re practising for in the game halls to come and jump in this sandpit.
“We want to see the athletes stick around in athletics, whether that’s on the track competing or coaching with us in some sort of capacity.”
“I think for us it was about exposing these children to the world-class facility at the Aberdeen Sports Village,” said Jane, “Many of them might not feel they maybe see that out of reach for them sometimes.
“That funding allowed us to make that booking, have our coaches and give them hours of athletics at this facility that they wouldn’t have had during their summer holidays if we didn’t have the funding.
“Programmes and money like this is really important for us.”
She said one of the key points to stress is to not fall on generalisations when thinking of a city’s makeup. Aberdeen is a city with a high GDP per capita, but also an area that has many citizens affected by poverty.
“Aberdeen, we take a lot of pride,” said Jane, “A lot of people think Aberdeen’s an affluent and well-off area, but obviously every city has their places.
“I think our clubs takes pride in our community programme and making sure that everyone has access.
“We’ve got one big track and it’s down to us to make sure everyone has access to that.”
