A great question about Fencing In The Schools that I wanted to take the time to answer for everyone as we head into year 2 of FITS. We have been working hard over the summer to take the lessons we learned last year and apply them to this upcoming year. Our goal is to double the quality and impact of our program. Read below. From David Arias: Idaho is a little closer to Alabama than your work in metro NYC. Id like to know more about your plans there. How do you translate the demo to new programs? How did, or did, the local fencing club help get things established in schools? Biggest issues is how do you get coaching commitments that stick? Will students that want to get more serious move to the local club? My Answer: Great question(s) David and my quick answer from the road in Idaho is below but your questions are right on-point to the work were doing. When we visit a region like Idaho we are doing a few different things. #1 We are conducting school assemblies/demos to get the kids excited about the sport and teach them some Olympian life skills. For the most part, the FITS team has reached out to the local schools to establish the relationships. #2 We are training our partner schools PE teachers to teach a unit on the sport using our resources and equipment. On this trip, we will have trained 10-11 PE teachers at 7 local schools. #3 We are conducting a community event, like an open house at the local club, where we invite people from the club to learn more about FITS while also allowing new people to come hear about the sport from Olympians. We promote that event to the schools and local media. Sabra Hummus is always served ;) #4 We are connecting with local media to raise the profile of the sport through local newspaper articles and local TV. Some Important Points: #1 We structure our program so that we come back each year. This allows us get to know the community better and if there is a turn-over at a school, we will train the new PE teacher while returning teachers get a more advanced refresher from us. #2 This year we have added a position of Local Community Coordinator who will be observing the programs at the schools for us and running recruitment events. They essentially are serving as our on the ground liaison between the schools and local club(s). #3 Schools run the unit over a 6-week period and then our community coordinator brings that equipment to a new school so that we can radically reduce the costs of schools having a beginner program. It is a resource sharing model so one school doesnt have to shoulder the burden/cost of 30 sets of equipment on their own. Some Priorities: #1 It is 100% essential that we work with the local fencing community. Fencing clubs and coaches are at the epicenter of the growth of our sport. We want to help them get more students and expand. #2 Im also getting a really great education on fencing in the various areas and as we move forward it will be critical to really nail the fencing club business model so that we can have more people taking the plunge into starting clubs, more clubs that are part-time becoming full-time, more full-time clubs expanding or franchising. Fencing In The Schools will be set up to really support and recruit new fencers around the country and also hopefully advise and provide best practices and resources to the local clubs. #3 We absolutely rely on the local community to help us fund programs year to year. This year, we are setting up local champions who are members of FITS and provide us with even $10 a month to help us sustain the program and grow it from year to year and we earmark funds from the local community to fund their local schools If youd like to come a regional champion for FITS: fencingintheschools.org/regional-champion/ Please feel free to ask me questions! Were learning a lot and this year were taking some steps to double the quality of the program and continue the learning until we are experts at launching new school programs and building pipelines for new fencers to become lifetime fencers.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 17:21:53 +0000
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