TEES VALLEY SPORT EMPOWERS PEOPLE TO GET MOVING

Through it’s work with You’ve Got This, Tees Valley Sport is inspiring and empowering communities in South Tees to get active in different ways. 

Shared values

Tees Valley Sport is a partnership organisation established 1999 by Sport England to inspire the Tees Valley to be more active. 

The organisation is one of 43 Active Partnerships in the country tasked with rolling out the local delivery of Sport England initiatives like You’ve Got This — a movement with similar values to its own. 

“There’s a lot of synergy in the work that Tees Valley Sport and You’ve Got This do and we complement each other in many ways. We wanted to support You’ve Got This in not only the immediate work they do but also their long-term work. Their approach is hugely interesting to us and we’re keen to learn from the work they do in social listening and campaigning, as well as their themed work around type 2 diabetes, prehabilitation and Slimming World.”

Empowering communities

Tees Valley Sport has worked together with You’ve Got This on several projects to help people in communities across South Tees be more active, including:

• Helping progress the You’ve Got This informal offer, looking at what facilities and activities are available within communities and understanding people’s needs to enable social prescribing. 
• Developing 1400 Bags of Fun activity packs alongside community partners for adolescents and disabled young people without access to online classes and resources during the COVID-19 lockdown. Bags included rackets, balls, chalks, skipping ropes, cones and activity challenge cards for families to use at home. 
• Introducing the Tees Valley Sport Active School project into local schools to encourage activity among staff and pupils. 
• Introducing the Tackling Inequality Fund alongside national partners to help community groups get back up and running after the COVID-19 lockdown.
• Developing capacity within community groups so that they’re able to train people to deliver activities and improve the resources available within those communities.

Supporting long-term change

Tees Valley Sport hopes to be able to support You’ve Got This to influence long-term change in South Tees and learn from the work being done in local communities.   

“You’ve Got This is taking a very different approach towards encouraging activity in communities and there’s a lot to be learned from it. The informal offer is very hard to get right and keep up to date and there’s a big challenge in forcing systematic change, distributing leadership and getting political commitment. It’s going to take time. But we’re keen to support them in making it happen. Hopefully, their work will see other authorities in the Tees Valley adopt a similar approach.”