Bury project shortlisted for National Lottery award

I Will If You Will (IWIYW) is appealing for local votes as it strives for nationwide acclaim in this year’s National Lottery Awards.

The female fitness scheme delivered by Bury Council, with National Lottery funding from Sport England, beat off stiff competition from 620 organisations to reach the public voting stage.

IWIYW – which is competing against six other projects to be crowned the winner of the Sport category – aims to get more local women and girls more active, more often and create a blueprint of how to tackle the gender gap between the numbers of men and women being active or playing sport.

Councillor Jane Lewis, cabinet member for communities on Bury Council, said: “Reaching the finals of The National Lottery Awards is testament to the hard work which the IWIYW team and the programme’s participants have put in since it started two years ago.

“Lottery money has been instrumental in getting IWIYW off the ground and has helped us to engage with thousands of women, girls and their families across Bury – many of whom have never felt better after trying regular exercise.

“We’re hoping that people from all over Bury and anyone from wider afield who thinks our project is worthwhile will place their vote – it would be a fantastic reward for everyone involved in IWIYW to receive national recognition for everything we’ve achieved so far.”

To vote for I Will If You Will, visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/project/i-will-if-you-will or phone 0844 836 9692. Voting runs until midnight on Wednesday 29 July.

ENDS

Press release issued: 9 July 2015.

Note to editors:

I Will If You Will is a movement designed to help the women and girls of Bury get more active. It aims to overcome the many practical and emotional barriers to being active, while encouraging women to support each other by joining the I Will If You Will community.

The Phase One campaign was delivered by Bury Council with £2.3 million of National Lottery funding from Sport England. For the Phase Two campaign, Sport England has allocated a further £2 million to extend delivery over the next two years (to December 2016). I Will If You Will is focused on changing women’s and girls’ behaviours towards taking part in sport and physical activity with the aim of getting more women and girls being more active, more often, and helping improve the health and wellbeing of people in Bury. In doing so the ambition is to create a guide on how to practically go about engaging with women and girls locally and the implications of doing so.

The successful IWIYW pilot campaign identified valuable insights and helped develop the foundations for Sport England’s national This Girl Can campaign, which launched in January 2015.

For further information about the National Lottery Awards, please contact Nicola Bligh: Nicola.Bligh@Lotterygoodcauses.org.uk, 0207 211 3991.