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Allwyn UK volunteers deliver Sporting Memories activities in Leeds in new partnership

This year, Sporting Memories has teamed up with Allwyn UK, operator of The National Lottery, in an exciting new partnership to support their employees with volunteering opportunities.

The partnership with Allwyn UK will provide lots of positive opportunities for their staff to volunteer in helping Sporting Memories with new activities and enabling us to reach more older people and support them in ageing well and improving their mental and physical wellbeing.

With Sporting Memories being a National Lottery-funded organisation, the partnership will also enable the employees to experience first-hand the incredible impact National Lottery funding has on communities.

The first volunteering experience took place earlier this month as a team of 10 enthusiastic Allwyn UK employees from the Stockport area travelled to Leeds to take part in activities within one of our projects working with Leeds City Council Care Delivery Services.

Kayleigh Catford, Development Manager at Sporting Memories, greeted the volunteers at Calverlands Day Centre and delivered a training session explaining our resources and how to deliver a Sporting Memories session with older people.

Fully armed with their new knowledge and copies of Spot the Ball, the volunteer team split in to small groups and headed off to a further three Care Delivery Service locations across Leeds.

They were greeted by small groups of older people all waiting to chat about sport and take part in physical activities. The volunteers were brilliant and got stuck in chatting to everyone about what sports they played when they were younger, what sports they like and general conversations about their lives. A range of physical activities took place such as skittles, throwing games with bean bags and balls, dancing and one group pretended to swim various strokes to get their arms moving.

During their time with the groups, the volunteers also learned that netball was a favourite sport of the attendees, as well as rounders, and that one older lady had learnt to swim in the past year after a fear of water.

All the participants thoroughly enjoyed the session, we saw lots of smiles and plenty of laughter. We were asked ‘when are you coming back?’ and with an individual commenting that ‘it was a lovely surprise and has made my day!’.

Sarah Waldron, Care Delivery Community Engagement Worker at Leeds City Council said: “This was a great first introduction for volunteers to engage with older people across our settings. We know everyone really enjoyed and it was great to see them engage with new people and we saw that it made them happy.

“We look forward to working with Sporting Memories to increase opportunities in our settings to deliver more sessions and activities.”

Kelly Hart, Director of Impact and Fundraising at Sporting Memories, also added: “We would like to thank the 10 volunteers from Allwyn for taking time out of their working commitments to deliver these positive sessions across Leeds. They were all brilliant and we hope they come back soon to volunteer.”