In the lead up to the event, we are profiling each of our award category finalists. The Community Impact Award identifies, celebrates and encourages collaborative projects which positively impact children, young people and their whÄÅnau. We'd like to congratulate our finalists:

Aktive (Auckland Sport and Recreation) - Good Sports

Good Sports is a culture change initiative which aims to create positive sporting experiences for children by educating and supporting key adult influencers in youth sport: parents, coaches, teachers and sport administrators.

Aktive established Good Sports in response to:

• The prevalence of side-line behaviour issues
• Recognition by leaders within sport sector that coaches are critical for enabling or inhibiting children's development of a lifelong love of, and involvement in, sport
• Recognition that there was limited understanding about parents' impact on children's sporting experiences

Aktive noted there has been a decline in the number of children participating in organised sport over the past decade with many of today's sporting experiences no longer meeting children's needs as effectively as they could.

Adults in youth sport roles are critical in enabling positive sporting experiences that meet a child's needs.  

Good Sports encourages positive adult behaviours that enhance children's experiences in sport and comprises workforce development, community and bespoke workshops, educational resources, marketing and communications.

The programme's delivery network continues to grow, with more than 220 sector members having attended the Good Sports Developers Course and more than 4000 adult influencers attending workshops.   Many sector organisations have also embedded Good Sports into their businesses.

Sport Gisborne Tairāwhiti - Waikirikiri Park Playground Project

Kaitī is a suburb that Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti (SGT) identifies as a high needs community, with the level of deprivation in the suburb a key barrier to engagement with the community. A high Maori and Pasifika population, Kaitī has high levels of unemployment, inactivity, single parent households, and low median incomes. The number of children and young people in the community is high.

Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti engaged with the Kaitī community in a consultation process to develop a playground at Kaiti's Waikirikiri Park that met the aspirations of community while

supporting a sense of ownership, building community voice for spaces where locals play and are active.

Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti offered to lead the community-engagement project on behalf of Gisborne District Council in order to develop meaningful locally led upgrades to the playground and build a sense of ownership and pride within the community.

  As well as consulting with the community including Kaiti residents and schools, Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti identified local champions who supported Waikirikiri Park and the local community. The champions held the joint belief the project must enable youth and the community to use their voice and champion local aspirations. Close to 1,500 people participated in the engagement and decision making on which playground was the right one for the community.

  In November 2018, roughly 12 months after Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti began the first community engagement, Ngati Oneone, with support from Council and Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti, opened the playground. There has been a major increase in users of the playground and a general consensus that the community worked toward an asset that meets their needs.

Around 130 community champions have committed to be a part of the project going forward, creating a meaningful network for future initiatives in Kaitī.

Sport Waitakere - Gear Up Our Schools

Sport Waitakere had received overwhelming feedback from West Auckland's decile one, two and three schools that due to high levels of deprivation, schools simply do not have the access to appropriate sporting equipment, or the funds to procure the equipment and deliver quality opportunities.

Sport Waitakere ran a full audit of schools' gear sheds and alongside school staff, created a benchmark as to what they needed to deliver a suite of quality opportunities for their students. They then pulled together a funding bid to purchase gear that was required to meet this benchmark.

Additional insights led Sport Waitakere to further understand that some school staff and whanau didn't know how to use gear in a multi-purpose manner to ensure they could offer multiple opportunities. The need for professional development was included in the funding bid to ensure the project made maximum impact. Now, schools not only get sports equipment, but also free professional development workshops and mentoring to help them deliver quality opportunities for students.

More than 12,700 pieces of sporting equipment have been delivered to 29 decile one, two and three schools in West Auckland - and in to the hands of close to 10,000 children.   As well as the equipment, 300 teachers have also been offered ongoing professional development around play, sport and physical literacy through the Gear Up Our Schools programme.

Sport Whanganui - Community Bike Park

Whanganui's road cycling and mountain bike communities agreed that more emphasis was needed on the development of cycling opportunities locally for youth to develop the confidence and competence of riding in a variety of environments.

After consulting with Council, local cycling clubs, community and businesses, Sport Whanganui developed a Community Bike Park.

Working with key partners and local advocates in and around the community, the bike park needed to be accessible to all ages and levels of ability, cost effective in its creation and ongoing maintenance, help reduce existing barriers to participation by making it multipurpose and for all ages and stages of development, and making use of an underutilised piece of land to create a safe and welcoming space that could be used for recreation, sport, education and safety purposes and programmes.

An increased interest in mountain biking followed the opening of the park and has led to the Whanganui Mountain Bike Club partnering with Sport Whanganui to introduce an annual Primary and Secondary Schools Mountain Bike Competition with 15% growth of the Kiwi Kids Mountain Bike Series with more than 100 participants at each race since the creation of the park.