Aberdeenshire Council’s Live Life Aberdeenshire team were successful in obtaining ‘Get into Summer’, funding from our partners at Sportscotland to support a range of sport and physical activities across Aberdeenshire. The LLA team have linked with partners at Aberdeenshire Clubsport SCIO and made available up to £25,000 of funding to clubs helping to deliver free sessions throughout the school summer holiday period.
Why the funding has been provided?
Sportscotland has been provided with this funding to help improve the wellbeing of children and young people over the summer period. They are working with local authorities to coordinate and deliver holiday activities and experiences, including wider family support where needed, and wherever possible targeted at low-income families, children and young people particularly adversely affected by the impacts of the pandemic.
Throughout July and August, over 5000 youngsters took part in free activities during the seven-week summer holidays from trampoline to mountain biking, yoga to paddleboarding all supported by the ‘Get into Summer’ funding.
As a board Aberdeenshire Clubsport met weekly over the summer and have awarded a total of 34 applications, each very strong and offering a wide range of summer activities.
One very impressive application and a key part of the overall programme was a series of seven half day sessions at Lochter Activity park being offered for children with disabilities through the Get Into Summer funding.
Alison Shaw the regional manager for Scottish Disability Sport commented on the grant award: “Grampian Disability Sport has been awarded a grant, which has enabled them to provide seven half-day adventure activity days for youngsters with disabilities, their siblings and parents or carers at Lochter Activity Centre in Oldmeldrum. The Centre is renowned for adapting their programmes to suit people with different needs and abilities, and some of the young people will have their first experience in activities such as canoeing, Segway driving, archery, buggy driving, fishing and more. The activity days were developed after a number of bookings came in from parents of young people with learning disabilities and autism for Scottish Disability Sport’s summer camps (which are also being held at Lochter but are targeted at young people with physical disabilities and sensory impairments). There has clearly been a need for such a programme as all 140 spaces available on the activity days were booked within 24 hours of bookings being open”