Getting Youth involved off field

Rocman

Hi everyone,

My clubs currently thinking of new ways to get youth members involved in the Club off the field e.g. organising events, helping out etc.

Has anyone any ideas on ways we can do this? We don't want the average age of our committee to get older and older without any young people coming through so we're trying to get our minor age members involved now.

nice_guy80

Rocman wrote: »

Hi everyone,

My clubs currently thinking of new ways to get youth members involved in the Club off the field e.g. organising events, helping out etc.

Has anyone any ideas on ways we can do this? We don't want the average age of our committee to get older and older without any young people coming through so we're trying to get our minor age members involved now.

first avenue is get them involved in refereeing underage blitzes for U8/10.
setting up pitches etc
next step could be helping out specific events - sports camps, field days, parties eg Halloween or Christmas.
young people are well able when given

a youth committee could be established to make some suggestions to the club about how to improve the club for younger players. they could be given a set project to work on for the club. many schools do this and it gives the younger people a sense of ownership of the club.

Santa Cruz

Try and develop some Transition Year programme that they can complete. Perhaps a module on nutrition, fitness, cool down/warm up exercises, referee situations etc.

Boom__Boom

One area where youth can be a lot more comfortable than older folk is in IT - get them involved in the whole website, social media area

Also stuff like contributing pics/videos/reports from matches

For youngsters in school and college, explain that getting experience off-field can help them in terms of employment prospects - maybe try to develop a program that would help them to say in job interviews - rather just saying I played GAA with my club, if they can also say I also helped coaching youngsters, did some reffing of underage games, helped with the club's website and with the club's financial committee fundraising efforts, it's a lot more impressive.

Also explain that it's their club - give them a feeling of ownership and that they are the ones who will be running in the club in the future. Explain to them that all the effort in the world will count for very little if efforts arent made off-the-pitch.

Rocman

Those are some great suggestions guys. It should help in the future. Anybody else have some ideas?