Community sport programs

Although it might seem like I live at the pool all day, I do get to leave sometimes. Many times that's to head to a meeting or other 'fun' event. Last night I had a community sport meeting hosted by the 2010 legacies now project over in North Delta. The evening was designed to provide feedback to the Provincial government on directions for sport from 2010 to 2014, and was a good chance to share ideas, problems and solutions with both other community sport groups, civic administrators and the 2010 facilitators.

Some of the issues that came up were pretty typical - insufficient facility space, poorly managed facilities, lack of volunteers, lack of local training situations for coaches/staff etc. Through the sharing of ideas we also discussed some potential solutions as well as solutions that are already in place that many people are unaware of. One such program is the KidSport BC program.

KidSport BC is a community based sport funding program designed to allow children aged six to eighteen to participate in a season of sport, the grants are available for up to $200 to be used for sport registration and participation. You can apply once per year PER SPORT, so if you swim but also play soccer then you can apply twice per calendar year.

One of the other issues we brought up was that there are so many organizations that offer support services for coaches, athletes and administrators that it can be sometime difficult to know where to go! For swimming in BC we have;

• Swim BC - our PSO (Provincial Sport Organization)
• Swimming Canada - our NSO (National Sport Organization)
• Sport BC
• 2010 Legacies Now
• SportMed BC
• Canadian Sport Centre Pacific
  
• BC Athlete's Voice
• Coach's Association of BC
• SportsFunder
• BC Games Society
• ProMOTION plus
• Team BC
• Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport

It's little wonder there's such confusion about what programs are out there!