Greater Manchester Sweeps up at the National School Games Awards

By GreaterSport | 30 November 2018 | TAGS: education, School Games

On 20th November Greater Manchester Local Organising Committee (LOC) received the LOC of the Year Award at the School Games National Summit in Coventry for the use of Young People's Voice within the planning for the School Games.

Thanks to all LOC members, the Greater Manchester SGO group, Oldham Sixth Form College and students on our Young Organising Committee for supporting the application and helping Greater Manchester be successful in achieving this award.

The award recognises three key areas;

• Understanding young people
  We've formed the Young Organising Committee (YOC) following an extensive application and interview process where 10 young people were selected to represent the young people of Greater Manchester. The YOC consult with other young people, who are more honest in providing feedback to their peers, ensuring that young people are involved in the planning process. 
• Motivating young people
  Following the removal of leadership from the GCSE curriculum we needed a new way to engage leaders and motivate them to support the School Games. As a result we set up the Greater Manchester Young Leadership Academy and supported over 160 leaders with training courses that will help them in their future goals. 
• Engaging young people
  The MATP festival was set up to engage new groups of young people who have found it difficult to attend our events, receiving great feedback from young people and teachers. We're now looking to next year's events to ensure more young people are able to participate by setting up competitions with the focus being on winning value awards. Similar opportunities have already been set up, such as a Grapple Tackle Festival for U15 girls, where the emphasis was on learning to play and then take part in a friendly competition with the opportunity to feed into a local club.

Greater Manchester also scooped another award, with West Wigan's School Games Organiser (SGO), Cathy Robinson, winning SGO of the Year. This annual award is given to the SGO deemed to be performing best across the full SGO tasklist over a 12 month period. Take a look at the video below and see exactly why Cathy won the award.