Volunteer to help promote the 2010 London Youth Games

How can you help?

We are looking for some volunteers with Communication & PR skills to work in a team to promote the games. You will be working with a group of young people to develop some promotional projects. As the games start in the summer 2010 we are looking to set up some project teams asap.

These could include:

Setting up Social Networking
E Newsletter
Improve press exposure & online articles
Improve existing website
Flyers and Posters
Creating a DVD of the event

What is the London Youth Games?

The London Youth Games is the biggest multi sport youth event in the country, providing sports activities for tens of thousands of young people each summer across a range of diverse sporting disciplines. Having run for 33 consecutive years the games this year has reached it’s landmark 500,000th competitor and can boast such past participants as Linford Christie, Christine Ohurugu, Rio Ferdinand and this years Patron, Luol Deng.

How and why are Westminster involved in the Games?

Westminster has never featured highly in the final standings but this year were recognised with the Ric Grice fair play award as well as extending their youth games provision to cater for over a thousand youngsters in the run up to the event. This year along with a slightly increased resource Westminster are looking to climb higher than the 2009 finishing place of 32nd whilst providing a bigger youth games activity provision than ever before.

What is this project trying to achieve?

With 60% of Westminster students leaving the borough at the end of the school day it is imperative that as a Borough engage with the youngsters as part of their school day. By doing so we are encouraging our young people to be healthier and to build a sense of community within the borough. Historically Westminster have had great difficulty publicising our provision and our successes to the young people of the borough and that is where volunteer and expert help is required. As a collaboration you will be tasked with working alongside young people to promote both the activity available to young people as well as the successes and news stories that would accompany the provision.

Westminster Sports Unit already has a website and they would welcome anyone who could utilise this medium on a regular basis to keep the population informed of any developments as they happen. To engage with a wider and younger audience it is seen as advantageous to use social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Alongside this the establishment of an e-newsletter would be a quick and easy way of
disseminating information to young people.

Typically young people do not feel proud to represent Westminster at the London Youth Games. Through this media project we would like to see a change in attitude to representing Westminster. Crucial to achieving this is portraying a more rounded experience of the Games and not just the competition element of the event.

What are the key targets for this project?

We are now recruiting a diverse mix of young volunteers that have a motivation to get involved in sports media and would like to benefit from the expertise of working alongside highly skilled employee volunteers. We are suggesting to form 6 project groups which are a mix of student and employee volunteers. It will be a fantastic opportunity for young people to be mentored by professionals and work on a long term project to produce a variety of media publications.

Following the completion of the Games it is envisaged that the project would continue through further projects. It would be ideal to produce a highlights DVD or video clips to show at both a planned Awards Ceremony and to publish on Social Media Websites to ensure young people can catch a glimpse of them participating. The project will be coordinated by the Westminster Borough London Youth Games Rep Ian Tinto.

We would like a minimum involvement of 2 hours a month on this project but everything is very flexible and open about how the support could be offered both face to face and remote assistance is helpful.