Cycling Award for Young Volunteers To Be Launched

Posted: 7 October 2009

British Cycling will be launching its new Cycling Award for Young Volunteers at the annual School Sport Partnership Conference in Telford on the 14th and 15th October. The conference will see Partnership Development Managers from across the country attending and British Cycling will be there to promote the Go-Ride programme and the Cycle Training initiative.

As we move closer to the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics the conference theme of Building a Sustainable Legacy is especially topical. To support the conference theme, Go-Ride will be launching its new Cycling Award for Young Volunteers.

The new Cycling Award for Young Volunteers provides young people with a broad range of skills, across a wide variety of activities and an exciting and varied choice of roles to experience within the sport. A young person can volunteer in any of the volunteer options:

• Running a club - this could include event management, race co-ordination, club development and even lead to becoming a Youth Officer for the club
• Officiating - this may include marshalling at Go-Ride racing events and assisting at British Cycling open competitions
• Coaching - acting as an assistant to a British Cycling qualified coach at a local Go-Ride school or community club

On completion of an initial workshop, delivered by British Cycling, young volunteers will be placed with local Go-Ride community clubs where they will have the opportunity to volunteer in one or all of the volunteer options.

The programme links into the Step into Sport pathway. Young volunteers can gain enhanced leadership and communication skills, those tangible for CV-building and further education or employment applications. A Volunteer Passport will be given to record volunteer hours. 12 hours for a bronze award, 24 for silver and 36 for a gold award. Free membership of British Cycling is available and perhaps even recognition at the annual British Cycling Awards celebrations for outstanding volunteers!

Clubs can take advantage of enthusiastic and creative young volunteers. They can provide extra support in the three key volunteering options as well as direct engagement with a club's young membership and representation of youth views at regional youth forums.

So if you are a young person with the drive to volunteer, if your school has links to a local community cycling club and they would like to get involved or you are an interested Partnership Development Manager visit Dan Small and Oli Lougheed at the conference or contact:

Andrew Chaston - Development Officer for Volunteers & Clubs
Call: 0161 274 2126
andrewchaston@britishcycling.org.uk