2017 has been another year to remember for the British Gymnastics Foundation. Alongside a host of fundraising success stories, we now have Kristian Thomas and Beth Tweddle MBE as ambassadors for two of our programmes, we’ve released ground-breaking research conducted by Age UK and we’ve even appeared on prime-time national TV.
The Love to move programme has been the major success story of the past 12 months. Most notably, we were delighted to receive £499,991 of National Lottery funding from Sport England which will assist a four-year project do develop and expand the programme. You can find out more about the programme here.
We also launched a crowdfunding campaign, which thanks to the generosity of so many people, raised over £14,000 to go to the same cause.
To coincide with the crowdfunding campaign, a booklet including exercises from Love to move was made available for download. The booklet has been downloaded more than 75,000 times! Download your copy. Research conducted by Age UK was also released which reported that the programme shows ‘demonstrable benefits in the physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of older people.’ Read the full research.
Alongside the release of Age UK’s research, our charity Manager, Patrick Bonner, was invited on to the BBC Breakfast sofa to show some of the key exercises of the programme, allowing a national audience of 4.5 million people to see the work we are doing.
Multiple Olympic gymnast and British Gymnastics legend Kristian Thomas, agreed to become an ambassador for the Love to Move programme, and lead coach Kim Hall has received recognition for her exceptional efforts, finishing runner-up at the European Commission’s Sport Awards in the Local Hero category.
Away from Love to Move, the Hardship Grants programme has awarded just over £17,000 to 73 British Gymnastics members in 2017, ensuring they stay in the sport of gymnastics despite going through a time of financial hardship or personal crisis. In November, we were delighted to announce Olympic medallist and multiple World champion, Beth Tweddle MBE, as an ambassador for the scheme. And it was Beth that helped us to launch our Christmas campaign for this year. Watch our Christmas campaign video when Beth went to meet Libby, one of our grant recipients.
People have completed the London Marathon, Tough Mudder events, an Inflatable 5k fun-run and hosted a yoga weekend to help raise additional funds for us which we are extremely grateful for. If you would like to fundraise for us in 2018, email [email protected] to register your interest.
Tumble, our Foundation bear, is also now available to buy from the British Gymnastics GymShop, with all profits helping us to transform lives through gymnastics.
It’s been another incredible year, and we look forward to sharing more great news in 2018.