What is this campaign about?
Kit Out the Nation’ is a month long Make a Difference campaign (Saturday 4th September – 2nd October) aimed at taking in and distributing unwanted, good condition sports kit and getting it to children and teenagers who need it. It will mirror the ‘Give a Laptop’ campaign, working with partners around the country.
Why are we doing this?
We’ve long known of the issue around access to sport and exercise because of the affordability of kit. The situation has been compounded by the pandemic and this is our chance to help to improve that situation.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee published a report on 29th July 2021 where they said data from Sport England showing 100,000 fewer children met the recommended level of activity in 2020 than in 2019 was “of significant concern”
They called for
• a sporting equivalent of the “Eat Out to Help Out” campaign, entitled “Work Out to Help Out”, to incentivise volunteers and participants to get involved, participate in organised sport and support the sporting infrastructure, both in England and across the UK
• before the end of this year, the government should initiate a nationwide communications campaign, similar to that of the “five a day” campaign, to emphasise the importance of children and young people engaging in at least 60 minutes of moderate activity every day
• the government work with Sport England, UK Sport and the National Lottery to review and revise the current funding models to enable sports organisations to accumulate greater reserves and, as a result, have more of a cushion to support themselves with should another situation like the COVID pandemic occur
• the government should set out the ways in which it intends to encourage schools across the country to make their facilities more available to community and grassroots sports clubs at a fair rate
There are other benefits – it’s recycling on a grand scale. Good condition equipment that would otherwise go to landfill getting an extended life, it benefits the environment.
What experience does the BBC Make a Difference campaign have of this type of campaign?
We have done it before. Our Give a Laptop campaign has now distributed almost 100,000 laptops to schools across England, and donations continue to come in.
How do local partners get involved?
We’re looking for partners to get involved who have links in our communities and can make their premises available for donation of clean kit in good condition at specified times. Those details will be shared on our Make a Difference website – as we do for Give a Laptop here
If you have the resources and connections to distribute to those who need used but decent sports kit, then that’s great – we ask that you record how much has been collected and let us know weekly for the duration of the campaign.
If you don’t have those resources or links then we can help by linking you up with our business2schools; if you find that local schools aren’t registered there then you might want to encourage them to do so.
There are some terms and conditions…
As partners of BBC Make a Difference we ask you to
- Provide BBC Make a Difference with proof of charitable/non-profit status, although we can work with private companies in certain circumstances. (Charities must provide proof of registration with the Charities commission and no current or pending investigations)
- Provide a suitable link to your website for promotion on the BBC Make a Difference website.
- Supply the BBC with a copy of your data protection agreement
- On their site to give clear instructions about when they (the partner organisation) will be able to take in donations
- Work with our national partner business2schools for distribution of kit if required
- Reasonably record and feed back to BBC Make a Difference the volume and type of donations collected and distributed. Metric of measurement will be advised.
- Undertake that kit donated will not be sold and there is no profit to be made as part of our partnership.
- Provide BBC Make a Difference with email and phone contact details within office hours for liaison purposes
- Note that in contributing to BBC Make A Difference you agree to grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media worldwide. It’s important to note, however, that you still own the copyright to everything contributed to Make A Difference.
- If unsuitable kit is received this can be distributed to charity shops.