Young women from local sports project Us Girls Liverpool want people to vote for them in this year’s National Lottery Awards. The Awards are an annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects, and they recognise and celebrate the difference that Lottery-funded projects make to communities across the UK.
As part of the Us Girls national programme which gets funding from the National Lottery, Us Girls projects provide sporting opportunities for young women and girls in disadvantage communities across England. The women’s sports charity is one of only seven projects to make it through to the finals in the Best Sport Project category.
The winning project in each category will receive national recognition on a star-studded BBC One TV show in early September and, in addition to the Lottery funding they have already received, will receive a £2,000 cash prize to spend on their project.
They work in some of the most deprived wards across Liverpool providing girls with activities such as football, dance, boxing etc. Around 3412 girls have been involved, with more than 1547 sessions and new 43 qualifications gained, new club sessions set up and 3 girls’ health and physical activity projects targeting young girls who would not normally access sporting activities, but now would participate regularly. Us Girls Liverpool have overcome the local challenges and the barriers to women’s sport and is now providing regular sports and fitness sessions.
“I am really proud of the work The Us Girls Project has achieved through partnership working, with young women seeing benefits associated with an active lifestyle, increased self-esteem, improved body confidence, an enhanced sense of belonging and social connection and, most importantly, girls having fun and improving their lifestyles makes all our hard work and efforts seem worthwhile”
“I enjoyed the Us Girls Sessions, I overcome my fear of participating and afterwards I enjoyed it a lot” participant at Us Girls Session
“For some girls it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. The young women have been given opportunities to participate in such a wide range of activities that they had never been able to do previously. Their levels of self confidence/self esteem have improved measured by their willingness to engage more and overcoming their own ‘barriers’ + ‘hurdles’- and in doing so- experiencing an increase in their own selfworth” Session Leader Us Girls
Olympic Gold Medalist & Us Girls President Nicola Adams MBE said “I am totally smashed that Us Girls has been nominated for a National Lottery Award. I’ve visited some of the projects and festivals, spoken to the young women and they all say how much being part of the Us Girls network means to them. I’m so proud to be the Us Girls President and want everyone to vote, the charity really does make a difference – vote for Us Girls.”
Voting for the finals is OPEN NOW and ends at midnight on Wednesday 24 July.
To register your vote for Us Girls call 0844 836 9711 or log on to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/project/us-girls. Follow voting on twitter: #NLAwards.
For further information please contact: rhiannon.lucas@liverpool.gov.uk