People have better chances in life
Scrappers Gym and Community Fitness Centre provides access for everyone using boxing as a platform to engage young people and adults in purposeful activities. We enhance their individual growth and development using boxing to encourage them to try new activities.
We promote social inclusion and bring people together from different areas of Swindon, developing community cohesion, alleviating anti-social activity and reducing barriers to participation.
The project has proven to develop peoples physical, social and mental well-being as well as raising their aspiration levels, increasing confidence and self-esteem. This enables them to perform better in life in general and helps people to make better life choices, develop team-working skills and wider social and personal skills.
Stronger Communities
The project engages with disadvantaged and socially marginalized young people and adults in Swindon, reaching into deprived and disadvantaged communities.
The focus of our work is to build strong relationships between the people and the local environment, using boxing to achieve mutual respect and trust in new or improved relationships.
We create cultural gateways for people to positive alternative lifestyles, we welcome people from a wide range of nationalities and cultures, promoting community cohesion.
We have developed relationships with local schools and Swindon Borough Council, we work directly with young people who have been referred to us by Swindon Social Services, Swindon Youth Offending Team and other organisations that provide support for young people.
Our boxing programme has significant benefits and has improved educational standards in local schools helping pupils to progress further in education and employment than they would have otherwise done without the boxing intervention.
Healthier and more active people and communities
Scrappers Gym volunteers work with local people to increase their physical activity through boxing and fitness related activities, maximising the likelihood of achieving a healthy life.
Boxing brings enormous fitness and health benefits such as increasing strength, developing anaerobic endurance, improving cardiovascular function and decreasing the risk of obesity and other life-limiting conditions.
Health Related Fitness – over 60% of members of boxing clubs are using the sport primarily to achieve health related fitness. Boxing is proving that it has tremendous appeal in attracting people into health-related fitness programmes, making more people healthier and more active.
Supporting local people
During the past 13 years since the project began, we have worked with and supported over 20,000 young people aged 5-24 and over 25,000 adults in the Swindon community aged 25 years and above helping them to increase their fitness, confidence and self-esteem. We started a NEW project in January 2016 called “Agility & Fitness for All” working directly with people with disabilities promoting inclusion and proving that having a disability poses no limits to success!
Agility and Fitness for all
This project addresses the need for people with disabilities to engage in regular exercise.
They have traditionally been excluded from commercial gyms due to lack of accessibility both in terms of physical access and services that meet their needs. Two in ten (18%) of disabled people participate in physical activities compared to four in ten (29%) of non-disabled people.
Scrappers Gym is the only charity and community gym in Swindon that works directly to support people with disabilities.
We secured a grant from the Big Lottery in January 2017 to deliver the free ‘Agility & Fitness for All’ sessions for people with disabilities twice a week for one year until December 2017.
We have been fortunate enough to secure further grant funding which has enabled us to continue the sessions.
