Building confidence and self-esteem through indoor netball.
Organisation: Visionwest Community Trust
Where: Auckland
Funding: $5,000
Purpose: To support young women, including young parents, to participate in a range of sporting activities
Visionwest Community Trust used support from the Physical Activity and Wellbeing Fund to provide rangatahi wāhine involved in their youth programme with sports and recreation equipment and fitness sessions, as well as registering a team for an indoor netball league.
This funding benefitted over 300 rangatahi, as well as their whānau who were able to see the improved engagement and happiness in their family members. This programme helped boost the confidence, motivation, self-esteem, physical activity, fitness, and general wellbeing of these young wāhine.
Two of the participants found their confidence through the indoor netball team. Wahine A is a young mother with a goal of getting back into playing sports, including netball, which she hadn’t played for six years. Wahine B struggled with bullying her whole life and had never played netball before.
Over the course of a few games, Wahine A became a key member of the team, and became less shy and more able to talk with others, including her support workers. She encouraged Wahine B to play for the team, who was a naturally talented player.
By the end of the season, Wahine B was named Most Improved Player at the end of season tournament and the team came second in the league! Through the programme, both wāhine were inspired to keep up their physical activity through playing netball.
“I will play winter league and just repeat the cycle each year, because netball is life.”
The indoor netball team supported by Visionwest in action getting ready to score a goal!