Our purpose
Yorkshire Sport Foundation is the active partnership covering South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. We are a National Lottery funded charity, supporting organisations across our nine districts.
Our vision is to create a vibrant, healthy and prosperous Yorkshire through everyone moving more. To do this we will connect, influence and support the work of local, regional and national organisations.
We are stronger when we move together.
We believe in the power of sport, physical activity and movement to change people’s lives, bring us together and tackle inequality.
We are clear in our ambition for it to be easy and enjoyable for everyone in Yorkshire to be active. We know moving more, being active or taking part in sport can help people to improve their lives.
Many people already benefit from being active but too many people also face challenges to build activity into their day-to-day lives.
Supported by system partner funding from Sport England and the National Lottery, our vision is a vibrant, healthy and prosperous Yorkshire through everyone moving more. And we mean, everyone.
We are stronger when we move together. This is why our work fully supports the aims and common purpose of Sport England’s 2021- 2031 Uniting the Movement vision by connecting, influencing and supporting the people and places across our regions. We are committed to playing our part.
Underpinning our vision are eight themes:
Neighbourhoods and communities will be vibrant and connected through local people creating a range of easy and enjoyable opportunities to be active.
Where we all live, work and play will be designed to make it east to be active. Green, blue and open spaces will be open to make the most of our natural settings. Our spaces and places will be safe, accessible and inclusive for local people.
Physical activity will play a major role within health and care systems so that everyone can enjoy more healthy years of life.
It will be easy to make journeys by walking and cycling to connect people with employment, education, leisure and tourism. Everyone can access these journeys that are integrated into the wider public transport system.
Employers encourage and support their people to be physically active throughout their working day.
Regular, population and targeted, effective public campaigns will connect and inspire people from all backgrounds to be active.
All children and young people will be active for at least 30 minutes within the school day and early years’ settings will provide the foundations for an active life.
There are inclusive, safe and accessible, formal and informal high quality sports opportunities at every level, and easy progression for talent to flourish.
YSF CEO Nigel Harrison:
"Our partners tell us we are many things to many people. And we like that about ourselves. We know we cannot achieve our vision alone. This is why we promote and encourage a ‘whole-of-systems’ approach – a way of ensuring that complex situations are tackled with common understanding, flexible working and agreed actions across the many agencies, organisations and communities who share a collective purpose across South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. To us, this means working collaboratively and purposefully.
"We know there are many people living in our communities who face a wide range of challenges arising out of the inequalities they experience. We're working hard to ensure we're playing our part, through sport and physical activity, in supporting people to meet those challenges. This includes adopting an approach that focusses on certain people and places, with targeted support and additional resources that will make the biggest differences.
"‘Everyone active’ isn’t a slogan or a far-off vision. We are committed to make it real for the benefit of the people and places in Yorkshire. We hope many others will join us in doing so."
How we work
Connect: bringing people, ideas, agendas, projects and expertise together.
We recognise there are thousands of people, groups and organisations across South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire who can make a difference in people’s lives through sport, physical activity and movement.We are proud to be part of this big picture – a movement building across our local places – and we continue to bring people together to unite our collective purpose.
Influence: shifting thinking, policy and decision making.
We know we need to influence the many to realise our vision – and being influential requires building trusting relationships, a common purpose and shared values. We recognise the strong foundation we have built to do this so we can now be bold where required, listen when needed, step aside when appropriate or take a leading role in effecting change. This means makingsport, physical activity and movement everyone’s business.
Support: providing backing, funding, guidance and resources.
We acknowledge we are uniquely and strongly placed to kick-start change. Our charitable status, Sport England National Lottery funding and membership of the Active Partnership network enables us to invest through our partners and local communities as and where needed. This will look different to different partners in different places, and will shift as local conditions and outcomes continue to evolve and transform.
Our place in the national picture
We are part of a national structure using Lottery and government funding to make sport and physical activity a normal part of life for everyone, regardless of who you are.
