SportSPasifik Project NZRA 2016 Outstanding Recreation Programme Award Winner

Overview

The SportSPasifik project has been awarded the 2016 Outstanding Community Recreation Programme Award through the New Zealand Recreation Association. The award recognises programmes that reflect significant community involvement and clearly achieve a community development outcome.

Developed in 2013, the project addresses specific barriers Pacific families and the community face in effectively engaging and participating in sport and recreation and living physically active lives. The programmes are culturally relevant and offer options for all ages to be active and engaged in physical activity and recreation.

Solution

The SportSPasifik project was designed to provide positive outlets for children, youth, adults, families and communities. Whilst it is not the whole solution, it offers constructive avenues for addressing broad and complex issues related to lower socio-economic communities, poverty, cultural integration and health.

The following programmes are offered.

• NiuMovement- A programme for Pacific families targeting young children specifically under 5’s.
• PolySports- A sport and recreation holiday programme for Pacific Island children 6-12 years.
• Equip’d- Aims to increase physical activity and improve the health of Pacific teen girls through sport, exercise, nutrition and mentoring.
• Choose Change- A programme for people with diabetes which facilitates control of overall health, weight loss and reduces diabetic symptoms.
• SportSPasifik Exercise Groups- Aimed at providing another avenue for the Pacific community to improve health and wellbeing.

Results / Impact

SportSPasifik started with 2 programmes and over the years has developed a life-stage model which enables Harbour Sport to effectively engage with the Pacific community across all ages.

Since the start of the project, SportSPasifik has impacted a total of 1279 Pacific people individually and a further 32 families as below:

• Equip’d: Initial delivery in 1 school, now in 4 schools = 155 Pacific girls
• PolySports: Initial delivery in 1 location, now in 2 locations = 649 Pacific children
• NiuMovement: = 32 families, 152 participants
• Choose Change: = 36 participants
• SportSPasifik Exercise Group: = 247 participants
• SportSPasifik Active Seniors: = 30 participants

Conclusion

Harbour Sport has been committed to seeing the SportSPasifik project successfully engage the Pacific community in sport and active recreation to increase opportunities and participation. SportSPasifik has achieved excellent engagement and results from very little resource with a team of only 3 staff and a small budget and has grown from one programme in 2013 to six in 2016. The judges of the award were taken with how this programme managed to deliver real outcomes for this community on many levels and how it reminded recreation professionals how important it is to understand your community. Harbour Sport will continue to work collaboratively to connect together people, organisations, groups and resources to make a lasting impact in this high need ethnic population for positive sporting and community outcomes.