Merseyside Alliance for Racial Equality (MARE) have partnered with Merseyside Sport to deliver workshops targeted at educating organisations on how to engage diverse communities in sport.

The Engaging Diverse Communities in Sport workshops are free for organisations and professionals to attend. The workshops aim to give practical tips on how to engage diverse and global majority communities in movement, sport, and physical activity.

The workshop comes to Liverpool tomorrow afternoon at One Knowsley at Court Hey Park.

MARE director Chantelle Lunt told MerseySportLive: “Broad health initiatives don’t always reach black and global majority communities, so it really needs a specific and targeted approach to reach those communities.

Merseyside Diverse - Court Hey Park. Credit: Ellen Gwynn
The workshop will take place tomorrow at One Knowsley in Court Hey Park. Credit: Ellen Gwynn

“Looking at the statistics, black and global majority communities are more likely to have cardiovascular diseases, more likely to have diabetes, and are four times more likely to die in childbirth or labour.

“Black people are more likely to be referred to mental health services, and are also more likely not to receive the support that is needed.

“In terms of accessing green spaces, the countryside hasn’t always been a friendly place for people of colour so there’s a lot of barriers that aren’t always there for the wider community.

“We’re putting this on the radar of organisations, explaining the challenges that people face and the ways they can work to engage people of colour and ensure their services are reaching everybody.

Through the workshops, MARE hope that organisations and professionals will act on what the course teaches them and evaluate their approaches to targeting diverse communities.

Miss Lunt continued: “The hope is that people will be more proactive in how they engage people from diverse communities, especially in areas that aren’t diverse.

“The hope is that they take what they’ve learnt within the course and they put it into practice within their organisation and take a real look at how they are engaging people of colour.”

Looking to the future, Miss Lunt believes that the effort to target diverse communities needs to go beyond the workshops.

She said: “The effort needs to be an ongoing process. Thankfully, Mersey Sport have committed to a second phase of funding so that this continues, because it needs to be a continuous process.

“We’re not going to undo some of those poorer outcomes in one course. It needs to be something embedded in policy, embedded in practice and also embedded in organisations.

If you are a professional or organisation, you can sign up to MARE’s Engaging Diverse Communities in Sport Workshop taking place tomorrow afternoon at One Knowsley here.

Featured image credit: Ellen Gwynn

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