The unsung stories of last season: Breaking barriers in Dundee
As the new season draws closer, we are taking the time to look back at the past year with the new initiatives that Badminton Scotland have implemented around the country this year that our community have needed. Across the next month we will be showcasing some of our best projects that have only been able to happen because of your affiliation and membership. You Play Badminton, we look after You.
After Khadija of AMINA’s (The Muslim Women’s Resources Centre) health and wellbeing strand reached out to Jane and Badminton Scotland a new partnership was formed to break barriers for women from ethnically diverse backgrounds in Dundee through sport and Badminton. This began with a Badminton Basics training course which resulted in 15 women ranging from1 6 to 70 being trained up over the two days.
The course was so successful that AMINA worked with Jane again to organise another Badminton Basics course focusing on 16 to 24 year olds.
Speaking to Khadija about the focus on young women she said “We recognise that young people are not so confident in the communities to go out and do sports independently and 12 young ladies got trained up, it was very enthusiastic and we held a few sessions for them after they got their certificate to give them after they got their certificate to give them more confidence.
‘Jane has been a pivitol role in that in coming in and delivering these sessions and that’s really helped the women to engage with her, as she sees the vision and helped pushed it. We decided with Jane to put on a BAME tournament because women have not gone out and played tournaments before so this would be a starting point’
Asking her why Badminton was such a good sport to encourage these women into sport she said “It’s a sport that people recognise through childhood and they remember holding a racket. It’s almost a connection and a lot of the women that we did do Badminton Basics training with even the ones who were 70 years remember playing badminton in the garden. It’s the engagement of I’ve done this, I recognise this, this is a sport I am familiar with. It’s an easy sport too, you don’t need a team you can play with children and family and it’s for all levels.”
“The feedback has been enormous, just seeing women go out and doing sports and seeing it brighten people up in their thinking. We’ve had people talk about how they want to set up a group themselves, they’d like to volunteer or now they play with their children.”
“For a lot of the women from the Muslim faith, it is the female only sport element of Badminton that they feel comfortable in. Having a closed door where they can take their Hiijab off or certain garments off and feel the freedom of playing sport without feeling uncomfortable about it and that can be crucial for BME women from a certain faith where they have personal boundaries that they like to put in place before they play sport.”
Badminton Scotland also subsidised the Badminton Basics course for BME young women, without this AMINA could not afforded to put this on as well as then being able to put more women in the training.
“With Jane she played a crucial role because she engaged exceptionally well with us and she took the vision on really passionately and that’s what brought us where we are today. She could have merely done the training but she saw the passion in us and she wanted to take this as far as she could.
“Having someone of that level in Badminton Scotland and being behind us gives us the confidence as an organisation to move forward knowing we have someone like Jane who we can go to if we are unsure of something and she will just pick up the phone”