National News

Special Olympics Raise Awareness of How Sport Can Affect the Lives of People with a Learning Disability

The Special Olympics has teamed up with parenting website Netmums.com to raise awareness of how sport can affect the lives of people with learning disabilities.

 

There are an estimated 1.2 million people in Great Britain with learning disabilities, but Special Olympics GB, the country’s largest provider of year-round sports training and competition for people with learning disabilities, suffers from a lack of awareness and support.

 

Running throughout November the partnership aims to address this and reach the 840,000 Netmums.com members, educating them about these challenges and to bring about greater acceptance and support from young people and families.

 

Netmums.com will host an interactive online film titled ‘Encouragement’ and a web chat with Special Olympics representatives and members. The short film was created by award winning director Johnny Green and filmed at Wembley Arena. It stars Omar Haddad, a Special Olympics GB gymnast from Widnes, who will be representing Great Britain at the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Athens.

 

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ECB Visually Impaired Talent Development Programme

The England Cricket Board (ECB) is looking for visually impaired cricketers to take part in their Talent Development Programme.

We know that there are visually impaired cricketers within the domestic blind cricket structure (played with the size 3 football) and visually impaired people within other VI sports who would make excellent cricketers at international level (played with the smaller ball) and the aim of this process is to identify those that want to get involved with the national blind cricket squad and to increase the talent pool available to us with those who excel.

Those who come forward will be assessed at a number of training weekends in the early part of 2011 and we hope to be able to take a squad of around 15 players to a performance camp at La Manga in Spain at the end of the summer.

 

The England Blind squad will spend 2011 preparing for their next international series which is an Ashes clash against Australia that will take place in England in 2012. Hopefully some of the players identified through this nomination process will be in the squad to defend the Blind Ashes in 2012.

 

Follow the link below for more information and a nomination form. If you would like to be involved with the ECB VI Talent Development Programme please contact one of the following contacts. To register your nomination please complete the form in the document and send to Martin Dean (ECB VI Team Manager) before the 17th December 2010. We will not accept any nominations after this date.

 

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New RYA Sailability App 
Whether you want to find out how to go sailing in your area or want details on how to become an RYA Sailability volunteer, it is now even easier to keep up to date with all the latest news and information with the new free RYA Sailability App for the iPhone.

“We are very excited about introducing our new RYA Sailability App. It is another fantastic way for people to find out everything they need to know about Sailability” explains RYA Sailability Manager Debbie Blachford.

 

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Restoring ‘original Lotto good causes’ will boost arts, grass roots sport and heritage income by £150m

The reform of National Lottery good causes means that arts, sport and heritage will again get the share of total proceeds originally intended, amounting to an extra £50 million each every year, Minister for Tourism and Heritage John Penrose announced.

 

A Statutory Instrument, laid before Parliament, means that – from 2012 – the original good causes will once again receive the 20 per cent share of the total, as set out when the Lottery was created in 1994.

 

John Penrose said: “The National Lottery was created in 1994 and, since that time, around £25 billion has been raised for good causes. But the founding vision – that it should primarily benefit the arts, sport, heritage and the voluntary sector with funding for projects that would not otherwise get off the ground – got lost along the way. Today I am putting that right.”

 

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