Monday 04-06-2018 - 09:49

This year, we recruited four Sport Volunteering Ambassadors to represent what sport volunteering is all about. 

We're sharing their stories to tie in with Volunteer's Week. Here's our mountaineer Harriet Bell's journey:

Harriet studies Biology and is part of the mountaineering club, but even more so, she’s been a valuable member of our sports volunteering team. Harriet has thrown her herself into a number of different aspects of volunteering throughout this year.  She has set up and ran her own campaign focusing on body image in sport.  In doing so, she has delivered a small workshop, and gathered opinions and experiences from her fellow students.  She has also supported a number of sporting events that have taken place throughout the year, including Battle of the North and the Manchester 10K.  Finally, Harriet has also worked closely with the Active Lifestyles Officer to organise and deliver the Zone out Zone, attending all 4 days of the event and discussing with students tips to stay calm during exams. We asked Harriet how she felt her year had been as a volunteer and as a lover of sport:

"I was first encouraged to apply for the role as Sports Volunteering Ambassador by Abi Dean, who I worked with in the 16/17 academic year. In that role I was involved in staffing MMU Sport promotional stands, planning and running a female only mass participation event called ‘Shake It Off!’ and volunteering at the Zone Out Zone week. Throughout these events I expressed my interest in getting more people who weren’t currently engaged in sport and sports volunteering involved with MMU Sport. Applying for Sports Volunteering Ambassador therefore was a natural progression, as it would allow me to focus on encouraging students to become more involved with our opportunities and promoting the benefits of volunteering.

My biggest achievement this year was planning and launching my campaign, which focuses on the barrier body image and self-esteem play in discouraging people from getting involved with sport and physical activity. My initial resource into this topic proved my thoughts that this is not an issue which affects just women, but many men too. Campaigns like 'This Girl Can' have done some amazing work to get more women involved in sport, but unlike those I did not want to focus my efforts solely on females. I spoke about my campaign on Hive Live, the sports show on Hive Radio, and ran a workshop to find out the specific sports which people tend to avoid due to body image and self-esteem reasons.

The top highlight of the year for me was the honour of accepting an Outstanding Contribution To Volunteering award at the Volunteering Awards 2018. I was not expecting this in the slightest, and felt very humbled to be awarded alongside people who had achieved amazing things such as raising tens of thousands of pounds for charity or made an incredible contribution to their society or sport committees.

My goals as Sports Volunteering Ambassador were to spread awareness of the impact of body image in sport throughout my campaign, to increase participation in sport and volunteering from students who do not classify themselves as ‘sporty’ and to generally increase awareness of the wide variety of volunteering opportunities that there are in sport. I believe that I did meet all of these goals to some extent, but there is always so much more than can be done. I believe that the next generation of Sports Volunteering Ambassadors will be invaluable in continuing to support students in their sport and sports volunteering journeys."

 

Harriet is also the second of three ambassadors leaving us this year, and we want to say a big thanks for everything she’s done for us and what she’s achieved for others

 

Check out Harriet Dorrington-Ward's story and Russell Townsend's story too.

Interested in volunteering in sport? Find out more here.

Learn more about all our different volunteering opportunities here.