GOGA Tayside on active representation throughout the Tayside region and the importance of physical activity for everyone.
“If you are going to attract a more diverse group of people, then you’ve got to be representative of a diverse group yourself.”
This year’s Scottish Women and Girls In Sport Week will run from Monday 30th of September to Sunday 6th of October. The theme this year is leadership; This is something that the Get Out Get Active Tayside programme (GOGA) is aware of, with it being a female-led organisation “Everyone should feel represented, women make up 50% of the population” said Iona McKay, the Programme Manager for GOGA Tayside. Iona went on to say, “It is a shame that there are a lot of things that actually have to target more women and girls, because they are so under-represented in many aspects of society.” “If you are going to attract a more diverse group of people, then you’ve got to be representative of a diverse group yourself.”
One method that GOGA are currently using to try and target more women and girls into their classes is providing a selection of services “we have got mixed classes and we have got women-only classes, The feedback has been that some women often find those classes to be more comfortable, in a female-only environment.” Iona said before continuing “Anything that we can do like that, like a female-only swimming class to reduce any of the barriers has got to be a good thing.”
Iona and the rest of the GOGA team are aware of the importance of finding out what barriers to participating in activities there are, and then mitigating them accordingly “We know that there is a huge drop off in participation in teenage girls, even before they get to that leaving school sort of age, we know that is even more heightened if people have disabilities.” “It’s about trying to target people at that younger age to keep them going, just moving in any way that works for them.” Iona said before adding “as I mentioned before the female-only yoga class is really good, because it is led by a female instructor in a safe space. If you have somewhere where you know, you can close the blinds and close the doors and they feel like they are safe when they come into the class, so that they can exercise freely and just be themselves.”
Along with being a partner with Scottish Disability Sport, GOGA Tayside is also a partner with NHS Tayside. This partnership has led to GOGA being in a position to implement classes and opportunities for the region to be more physically active, with an aim that an increase in physical activity throughout the Tayside area will reduce some of the strain and pressure on the NHS “We know that the burden of physical inactivity is huge not only in costs to the economy alone, but obviously the impact of the burden of diseases and health conditions. It is evidenced that physical inactivity is just as harmful as smoking.” Said Iona. This impact of physical inactivity is something that GOGA is directly combating through providing new opportunities to become more physically active for all under-represented groups, including women and girls. This can be evidenced by seeing that GOGA have achieved a total of 28, 394 participants attending their classes.
Through being a female led organisation GOGA view their role as being a lot more than just providing opportunities to be physically active “I think it is not just about delivering or providing opportunities for a whole range of people, including women and girls or any inactive groups, but it is really about doing the education and awareness of the damage you can do by just not moving.” Iona explained. “it’s about saying that just doing something each day is better than nothing, it’s about reinforcing that it is so important for people to feel better within themselves and get more confident overall.” Iona concluded.
If you are currently within the Tayside region and want to find out more about GOGA Tayside and their classes, you can do so by visiting their website. Link to website – https://gogatayside.co.uk/