Aspire consortium success as partner reveals breadth of support

Aspire Active Partnerships is a nationwide community of organisations who are collaborating to fight physical inactivity.

In March, CIMSPA announced its partnership with the lead organisation for improving children and young people’s participation in sport and physical activity.

Aspire engages children and young people in physical activity, by providing innovative delivery and training services and resources that educate and inspire.

Their education arm, Aspire Active Education Group, engages children and young people in physical activity. They do this through an award-winning delivery, training, and partner framework for the purpose of improving physical literacy, health, well-being and academic achievement.

Now, after working with Aspire’s consortium to improve engagement for some months, Aspire has received outstanding feedback from an SME they’ve been working with. “When I made decision to become an AAP I thought the main benefit would be getting into schools and delivering MotM and the business side of things would be a secondary addon,” said the partner, who operates in Torbay and the surrounding areas.

“But becoming a partner in the network has been the best business decision I have made. I also feel happier as a person and a business owner. I have started to put plans into place to help my working/life balance. I feel that running/owning a business is at times the loneliest place in the world and before joining the partnership at times I felt it was me against the world (without sounding too dramatic).

“I also feel most of all, I am becoming a better ‘boss’ and at the same time hopefully a better person and definitely a happier person.”

On Aspire’s work, they said:

“The detail in how you target schools, the research that goes into preparing for meetings is incredible. I managed to implement some strategies during May 2022, and we have managed to partner with 19 schools starting next week for the academic year. We will be working with 3,300 children per week. Our delivery team staff has grown by 50%. Our management team has also grown by 50%. We are also delivering MotM in numerous schools.”

Talking in March about the partnership with CIMSPA, Paul Griffiths, Co-founder of the Aspire Active Education Group said: “We believe that collaboration is key to get more children moving. Physical inactivity is a major problem in society and not one organisation will help combat this. It’s not rocket science… if we have more organisations providing high-quality services, we will have an impact.”