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Women across the UK encouraged to Reach into coaching

Reach, a new campaign focussing on women in coaching has been officially launched by sports coach UK today. The English Federation of Disability Sport will continue to support more disabled women to develop a career in coaching and increase the diversity within sport.

Reach has been created to raise awareness and inspire more women to get into coaching as well as encourage current women coaches to develop their skills further.

Targeting women of all ages and backgrounds Reach reinforces the messages that coaching keeps you active, can be a sociable activity and is a way of giving back to your community and sport. All this whilst being a role model to encourage others into sport.

Infographic says "A more diverse coaching workforce will provide participants with more choice of who they can be coached by."

The campaign has been created because women are currently under-represented in coaching. Research has shown that women do want to coach, providing the environment is right. However, sport is still regarded as a gendered activity which strongly favours men.

By creating greater diversity in coaching, Reach will begin to address this and participants will benefit from having a choice as to who they are coached by.

Tony Byrne, Chief Executive Officer of sports coach UK, said:

“The Reach campaign has been launched to encourage women of all ages from all backgrounds to become part of the coaching family. We want women from communities across the UK to know that coaching is an enjoyable and social experience while encouraging others to get active and drive participation in sport.

“Reach is about fixing the system and supporting more women in coaching. Working with partners across the UK, this campaign will provide women with all the information they need to become a coach or organiser within a sport or physical activity.

“To get involved in coaching you do not need to be sporty or performing at the highest level, more important is the desire to help others take part and help break down the barriers they may face to do so.”

To mark the launch of the campaign a new website has been developed to provide a hub of information which will support women, celebrate their successes in coaching through case studies, videos and photographs and also provide useful resources which will, in the long term, create a cultural change in coaching.

The English Federation of Disability Sport works with many organisations to include more disabled people in their programmes. This includes as coaches and other careers within sport. There are also many resources for those coaching people who have specific impairments sports coach UK and the National Disability Sports Organisations worked together on different fact sheets.

Join the Reach campaign, find information and tips on how you can get involved by visiting www.reachintocoaching.co.uk