Taekwondo's roadmap to boosting participation

18 Mar 2015 02:02 PM

A roadmap to increasing the number of people who play taekwondo is taking shape as part of a two-year plan for the sport.

Getting more girls and women into taekwondo and bolstering coaching are just two of Taekwondo Organisation Limited’s (TOL) aims.

Sport England has awarded TOL £934,886 of investment for the period from January of this year to 31 March 2017.

KickSister

The plans laid out by TOL, the over-arching body that manages Sport England’s investment into the British Taekwondo Council and British Taekwondo, include:

• Continuing to offer female-only sessions through its KickSister programme, while expanding it and working with local authorities and county sports partnerships

• Bolstering the TKD Generations training programme, designed for all ages and abilities, with specific work in analysing recruitment and retention rates, creating new offers for members and expanding training workshops for students

• Supporting clubs, helping more to achieve Clubmark accreditation, while encouraging more female instructors to train as national coaches

• Continuing to promote and deliver Touch Gloves – focused on growing participation among girls and women – at clubs and national events

• Growing the network of tutors and assessors and creating a new “Activator” workforce.

As part of the one-year participation funding it was awarded by Sport England in December 2013, TOL increased the number of people playing the sport – thanks to three of its key programmes – by more than 11,500, and launched 48 pilot clubs in identified “hot spot” areas.