Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 December 2021
Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media
Challenges facing Women in Sport: Discussion
Ms Nora Stapleton:
I would add a point about the targeted approach to participants and who campaigns are targeting. The 20x20 campaign was a fantastic visibility campaign. We applauded it and it gave everybody a common message and common voice when it came to the visibility of women's sport. We have spoken a lot about teenage girls today. That is an area that we are keen to emphasise a lot more next year. Our Adolescent Girls Get Active project is based on the research mentioned earlier, which we launched during the year. We currently have four teenage girls programmes piloting across Ireland in our local sports partnership and they are modelled off the research that came out of that Adolescent Girls Get Active report. Those pilot projects are being evaluated and will help us decide whether the way those projects were formed, including the physical activities within them, reflects the ethos of the key principles in the report, and if they have changed girls' attitudes towards physical activity and sport. That is a key thing we are hoping to measure. We have secured funding from the Dormant Accounts Fund, which will create a brand identity that will go with those projects. Our aim is to build the number of teenage girls programmes running across the country as part of the local sports partnerships, but possibly with NGBs as well. They should be inclusive and provide that welcoming environment for girls and have that national brand in order that girls can really see it and have it be visible to them so they are excited to be part of that physical activity programme. That is the aim for that project next year as we look to create a brand identity that will make it visible for teenage girls.
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