Well Done For Welwyn Who Become A Go-Ride Clubmark Club
News Posted 12th May 2008
Welwyn Wheelers are the 7th Go-Ride Club in the Eastern Region to achieve Go-Ride Clubmark Status. The aim of the Go-Ride programme is to get more young people, more active more often in cycling. Key to achieving this aim is the continued activity and development of community clubs is the progression from Go-Ride registration to Go-Ride Clubmark Accreditation. Clubmark is a Sport England, cross sport kitemark for clubs who have excellent working practices. To sustain and develop the activity of community clubs the Go-Ride programme offers Go-Ride clubs support in generating funding, recruiting new young members and ensuring that the new activities are sustainable. Welwyn Wheelers have utilised all the available support and progressed to Go-Ride Clubmark Status.
Welwyn Wheelers are based at Gosling Sports Park and the club has similar aim to the Go-Ride programme by wanting to enable their members to participate and promote cycle racing. The club do this brilliantly via several open races and meetings throughout the year at the floodlit banked velodrome at the sports park.
Training sessions are run for young people on Saturday mornings and are open to all whether a member or not. These will improve the skills of participants as they learn more and more about various Go-Ride skills.
Their new Go-Ride Clubmark Status demonstrates that Welwyn Wheelers have demonstrated minimum operating standards in Safeguarding Young People, Sports Equity & Ethics, Club Management and Coaching. This is an excellent achievement because although there is support available from the Go-Ride Team the progression is very much volunteer led. This is because it is the club that delivers all the cycling activities, planning and implementing initiatives as well as sustaining their excellent working standards. This also means that the club enjoys the benefits that result from Go-Ride Clubmark status. Benefits such as:
Seven free silver memberships for club officials
Coaching jackets
Free sponsorship fees
100 free bronze memberships for new members.
A benefit not resulting directly from the pockets of British Cycling and the most appealing is that all clubs achieving Clubmark status across sports have reported an increase in membership. This can only serve to strengthen the club and help them flourish in the future as more young people progress from youth racing and into senior racing with Welwyn Wheelers.
Any interested people should head straight to the Welwyn Wheelers Website at www.welwynwheelers.org.uk . This represents the club well detailing all the activities such as the Go-Ride sessions for young people, mountain biking, cyclo-cross and other social activities.
