Introducing Active Youth NI

Active Youth NI is a new Associate member of the NI Sports Forum. We caught up with Business Development Director, Joni Rock, to tell us more about the organisation and its activities.

Tell us a little about your organisation.

Active Youth NI is about empowering children and young people to reach their full potential for a lifetime of healthy living! We deliver fun, innovative physical activity to children and young people. Providing access, opportunity, and vital skills for all to transform a generation of young people’s physical, social and mental wellbeing.

We are a community interest company delivering a range of physical activity services and running funded programmes to children and young people who are statistically least likely to participate or have least opportunities to participate.

Active Youth NI was founded by mums, Joni Rock and Lisa Tomalin who jointly have over 40 years’ experience in sports and fitness from competing internationally, to coaching a range of sports and activities to all abilities and ages. Crowned ‘Best New Start Up’ at the recent Social Enterprise Northern Ireland Awards, the organisation has a growth mindset and plans to address the huge wellbeing challenges that our society faces by reaching as many children and young people across Northern Ireland with their programmes.

Can you share key accomplishments or milestones from the past year that you are particularly proud of?

Reaching over 2,000 children in our first 6 months of delivering!

Winning Best New Start up at the Social Enterprise NI Awards.

How would you like to support the development and promotion of sports within the community?

We are keen to work closely with other sports and physical activity organisations to increase accessibility and opportunities for all children to participate regardless of their background, gender or ability. We know how important it is to share insight and experience and we would be keen to have open forums to share and learn from each other so that together we can achieve more for children and young people across NI.

What made you consider joining the NISF?

We really value the opportunity to collaborate with other likeminded organisations and NISF provide a really strong forum to do that. We are keen to drive change across NI, and we know that NISF has a strong voice in championing that change on behalf of their members. NISF has a really impressive list of funding opportunities that is a really useful resource and ensures that relevant funding is hard to miss!

What upcoming events or initiatives should members look forward to in the coming months?

Active Youth NI run a number of Holiday Camps – look out for our Easter Camp, running from 3^rd.-5^th April (Bangor and Belfast locations). AYNI Summer Camps yet to be announced.

Also, watch this space for our big, brand new corporate partnership launch that we will be sharing publicly at the end of January!!