Celebrating our Movement for Change social entrepreneurs for Global Entrepreneurship Week 13th – 19th November
Written by
Nicola Curtis
External Affairs Lead
Photographed by @Persiljd on Calisseum pictures
""Access to sport and physical activity in England is still not close to being a level playing field"" said Tim Hollingsworth, chief executive of Sport England as he announced a major expansion of funding to tackle physical activity in England's least active areas last week.
""Too often, people in low-income communities don't have access to the same facilities or opportunities as wealthier areas.""
""This is manifestly unfair – and must be addressed as a real priority.""
We're proud to already be working with Sport England on our Movement for Change programme – a two-and-a-half-year partnership aimed at increasing the financial sustainability of sports and physical activity ventures as well as making the sector more inclusive and accessible to all.
Since autumn 2022, we've been supporting a growing community of social entrepreneurs who are helping to unlock the advantages of sport and physical activity for the most marginalised communities. To date, we've distributed £170k worth of funding to 17 people - alongside assisting them in gaining the skills, tools, and confidence they need to grow their venture and social impact.
We know that there are significant barriers affecting social entrepreneurs in the sector. Accessing sustainable funding in a competitive funding landscape while gaining legitimacy and visibility as leaders in a sector that so heavily relies on volunteering are only some of the challenges preventing them to scale, and we are only beginning to understand what works to meaningfully support them in growing their impact.
Photographed by @Persiljd on Calisseum pictures
Juan Lopez came to the UK from Colombia as an asylum seeker at the age of eight. Growing up in poverty in Tottenham, London he ended up getting involved in crime. However, at the age of 19 he joined the British Army to get away from the trouble he was in and to escape prison. He served for 10 years and during that time learnt the importance of physical activity and sport as a vehicle for personal development.
On leaving the army he returned to his community and worked with people from similar backgrounds to support them in improving their physical and mental health. He gained insight which allowed him to better understand the challenges that many people from his community face. As a result of his experiences, he made the decision to found Calisseum as a social enterprise in 2021.
Calisseum addresses inequalities in health and wellbeing across society by empowering communities with calisthenics, a holistic training method that uses an individual's own bodyweight. The organisation's mission is to unite diverse communities around inclusive group wellbeing experiences that create opportunities for personal development and lead to positive generational change across society.
As a child Ben Roper would invent games in his garden and then invite all the kids in the road to come over and try them out. When he grew up community projects gradually replaced those initial garden games, but his enthusiasm for them remained.
In 2020 Covid hit, and the UK went into lockdown, a filmmaker by trade, Ben's work suddenly got very quiet, and he began to wonder what else he could do. Designing games and experiences for people is something he's always done but he'd never previously considered them as potential businesses. With time on his hands, Ben began to work out how he could translate the excitement of computer games into the real world. He wanted people to be able to play tactical, interesting and social team games but in real spaces – combining both a physical and a social element. He started by creating and testing one spy game and quickly noticed the community forming around playing. While the game was great, the community was the reason people were coming back.
At this point, he realised that whatever he was building needed to be bigger than just the one game and PlayCulture was born. PlayCulture develop highly social outdoor games for adults (via an app) that can be played in a variety of spaces. Three games are available right now – Seektag, Zombies and PirateGold. Branded as 'sneaky fitness', some players have accidently run a 10k during a game.
Joshua Wehner knows how much playing basketball from a young age helped him both on and off the court and he wants to show others the value of being involved in the sport and how it can go way beyond being a sportsperson.
He knows it's not all about developing elite players and feels passionately about involving people who are not necessarily going to be competitive or have it as a career.
""You need to have people to watch the game, you need a cameraman, a photographer, you need a finance person, an accountant, a team manager, a doctor.""
""I've seen the game provide all those things, from my club alone. I want to be able to provide opportunities beyond basketball via basketball.""
Inspired by his coach from childhood, Joe White, who recently had a park in Hackney, London named after him for his community work, EverBetter Sport focuses on development on and off the court, youth employment and development of spaces. Joshua wants to show young people that you can get involved with community work while also making a good living.
""They can easily get themselves into the wrong thing, so we provide them with options.""
EverBetter Sport LDN is based in Walthanstow, East London. The enterprise uses basketball to help people in the community with improved fitness, confidence and communication skills. The core audience is 10-18s.
In 2016 Gareth Hughes was in a motorcycle accident. He broke all his ribs, his sternum, shoulder, knee, his back in four places as well as puncturing both his lungs. A truly life changing event, he had a tough, long road to recovery both mentally and physically.
Recovery started with six weeks in a coma. Along the way, his heart stopped twice, he contracted pneumonia, E-Coli and meningitis and he also lost five stone. Before the accident, he'd been a fit and healthy young man and an avid gym goer. When he woke, he couldn't talk or even pick up a pen to communicate.
However, after five weeks of intensive rehab that should have taken 12, things were looking up. Gareth was determined this was not going to beat him.
With ongoing mental and physical health battles exercise has become extremely important. Of course, his new way of life meant popping to the gym was no longer going to be an easy task. He needed to find and adapt gym sessions to suit his new abilities, and this was where the idea for an all-inclusive gym began.
Inclusive Fitness CIC will be an accessible gym facility that offers adapted equipment so that physically disabled people can participate in gym-based fitness.
Twenty years ago, Rashid Alibhai had recently graduated from university and was six months into his dream job at investment bank, Morgan Stanley - when he was involved in a road traffic accident which left him with multiple fractures of the pelvis. He was in hospital for eight months and then it took another three years to learn to walk again.
After a variety of hospital procedures failed to give him a full recovery, he was medically written off from work for the rest of his life. It was at this point that he turned to yoga to try and help himself - having discovered it first while having rehab in India, impressed with the way it's easily and freely incorporated into Indian society. Finding that this was not the case in England he resolved to bring the benefits of yoga to everyone instead of the fortunate few.
Movement Health Wellbeing CIC is a Hackney based studio offering yoga, movement and sound therapy with a focus on improving the health and wellbeing of racially minoritised communities.
Project Grow Youth Climbing 2023 is a social impact project from start-up businesses Crux Coaching CIC and Crux Climbing Coaching Academy.
The project aims to diversify and grow indoor climbing for young people in Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It does this through a profit distribution model in which customers who purchase sessions are also contributing to funding a set of sessions for young people so that they can have a better start in the sport.
The project also tries to encourage adults in young people's lives to learn how to belay safely, so that the sport can become affordable for a wider range of families.