Rising Stars - Developing Skills through Sport
The support from Glasgow Life has been fantastic this year. Funding support through the Sport and Physical Activity fund has allowed the programme to expand, gain access to facilities for competitions while coordinating relationships with new communities to ensure a pathway into club basketball.
The Rising Stars Charity is social outreach basketball charity which began in collaboration with the Glasgow University (GU) Men & Women’s basketball teams and has now additionally partnered with the University of Strathclyde basketball teams. The charity aims to better the lives of young people in less affluent areas of the city using the power of basketball through providing weekly after school basketball coaching to young people as well as academic support and tuition and opportunities to grow out with their community.
Glasgow Sport works closely with the charity to identify targeted low SMDI areas across the city for programme delivery while driving the collaboration of local partnerships within education and the wider Basketball community as well as providing grant funding towards the training and development costs of the coaches.
The pilot programme was launched in the Govan cluster, offering children and young adults the opportunity to engage in basketball, develop transferable skills and help them achieve their full potential in life through creating opportunities within and out with their immediate community. Since starting in Govan in 2018, the charity has expanded into the Hillpark Cluster with the aspiration to expand into the St Rochs cluster in 2023/24 driven by a new partnership with Strathclyde university.
The programme is directly delivered by University students with a passion for basketball. The recruitment and investment into the development of the volunteer coaches is critical to the success of the programme and long-term retention of coaches.
The philosophy and ethos of the Rising Stars charity that all trustee members are volunteers and as such, Programme funding and resources predominantly come from the support of partner organisations including Glasgow Sport who have been instrumental in supporting the development of the volunteer Workforce training by securing funds through the Sport and Physical Activity Fund. The application allowed Glasgow Sport to invest in volunteers training and development both on and off court by supporting individuals through Basketball Specific Coach Education as well as ‘Volunteer Tutor Organisation’ training – training dedicated to supporting young people who experience difficulties within their education allowing dedicated 1- 1 tuition off the court.
To reduce annual Basketball Coach Education costs for newly recruited coaches, Glasgow Sport in partnership between Basketball Scotland identified a Glasgow based coaching workforce to upskill which the Rising Stars Charity personnel were an integral part of. This allows the charity to delivery ‘inhouse coach education’ to newly recruited coaches, reducing the tutor fee and in turn, overall cost to gain the Basketball coaching qualification.
An embedded principle that the charity ask of their coaches and of the young people who develop into young adults as part of our program is to buy into our “Pay-It- Forward” principle. The Pay-It-Forward principle is founded on the basis that the giver of a good deed asks for nothing in return but for the receiver of the deed to “pay-it-forward” to the next generation. Through this, the charity hope to inspire a new generation of pro-social contributors who want to give back to the communities they grew up in, creating a sustainable loop which would allow the charity to increase their volunteer network and expand to further areas of the city.