Hands Up!

This article appears in the July 2009 edition of Sportshorts.

NSW Sport and Recreation and Castle Hill RSL Club are piloting a new program to increase volunteering in sport.

Hands Up! links sporting clubs affiliated with the RSL Club with retired members and visitors to fill the volunteering gap.

“There is a widening gap between player and volunteer participation in organised sport,” said Sport and Recreation Minister Kevin Greene, who announced the program last month.

“While participation is increasing at about 1% a year, volunteer numbers are falling at a similar rate.

“The end result is fewer volunteers carrying a greater share of the workload which creates stress and increases the volunteer drop out rate.

“The Hands Up! partnership with Castle Hill RSL is designed to encourage retired club members and visitors to give some of their spare time to local sporting groups.

“The highly skilled baby boomer generation is soon to reach retirement age so we are looking at ways to engage retirees,” said Mr Greene.

Hands Up! links back to Game Plan 2012, the NSW sport and recreation industry five-year strategic plan, which identifies increasing volunteers as critical.

One of the strategies within the plan is “to target a diverse potential volunteer pool, including younger and older members of the community, and provide opportunities that meet their motivation, skills and lifestyle”.

A major industry forum, run last year, further explored this. Attended by sport and aged services organisations, the forum looked at ways to link skilled retirees with community sport.

A key model was identified by the group – a licensed club that has community sport clubs attached to it, connecting its retiree members with the sports clubs who need volunteer help.

The Hands Up! program with Castle Hill RSL will pilot this idea.

“It is early days, but the first step for Hands Up! was an information night held at Castle Hill RSL last month,” says Cristy Cotter from NSW Sport and Recreation.