2004

The journey began in 2004 when Richard Raynes helped to start a children’s rugby club in Hackney, London. After two years Richard was amazed at the positive impact the club had on the young participants, but he noticed that most young people believed that there was nothing to do locally, often turning to destructive activities instead.

2008

On consulting the Hackney local community and with the help of university friend Peter Thomond, they created “SportInspired, Hackney”, a multi-sports festival giving children wider access to support to address this. This was invested in by UBS, as part of their wider community work in Hackney.

With our first Corporate Partner on board, this set the stage for incredible expansion and impact growth over the next 10 years.

2019/20

Since that festival in a field we have worked with 35 further partner organisations (including schools, sports clubs, businesses and local authorities), delivering 350 programmes to 75,000+ children across the UK.  Our core is still centred on the same fundamental insight Rich and Pete discovered in those first games 12 years ago; that the there is incredible opportunity to impact the potential of young people through bringing local businesses, residents, local authorities, schools and sports clubs together using sport as a vehicle.

We continue to develop and improve our programmes which now also include:

  • Specific training on improving mental wellbeing and nutrition concerns
  • Training Young People with new skills and exposure to role models to create long term impact to young people and ultimately their communities.

We’re so proud of what we’ve done so far, but we’re just getting started and are working to transform communities and enable sustainable change. 

 “The work SportInspired do for schools and the borough as a whole is vital in reducing the obesity epidemic… allowing students to thrive and enjoy sports and giving students a focus.” Year 7 Teacher

Bring on the next 10 years!