This year marks 12 years since the London 2012 Olympics, an international sporting event that helped create an ever-lasting legacy in Essex.
2024 is sure to be an exciting year for Great British sport as on Friday 26th July, the latest of the Summer Olympic Games begins. Hosted in Paris, this year’s event welcomes 3 new sports to the agenda with break dancing, sports climbing and surfing all featuring. The Paralympics will begin a couple of weeks after the end of the Summer Olympics, hoping to continue what is going to be an amazing summer of sports.
This year is also the 12th birthday of one of our close friends, the Multi Schools Council. Formed in 2012 after a successful bid for GetSet funding, the Multi Schools Council is a forum within Essex Schools, that allows the voices of Children and Young People to be heard. The aim being to tackle the negative perceptions towards Children and Young People in Special Schools.
Since its development the Multi Schools Council has had 490 of the 600 Essex based schools sign up to the network. Over the last 8 years, they have also worked with Active Essex to host the Invincible School Games, a sports day style event that all special schools in Essex are invited to, offering inclusive activities for the students to compete in against other school teams. This year being an Olympic year, each school will be given a country to represent and fly the flag of whilst they take part.
Keirran Pearce – Youth Service SEND & Multi Schools Council Lead said “Since 2012, the Multi Schools Council has been on an amazing journey, we must thank GetSet for their support with helping us grow from the beginning. I believe that the creation of the invincible games gives us the perfect platform to continue doing great things for Children and Young People in Essex. The buzz word in 2012 was LEGACY, which I think right now couldn’t be more appropriate.”
Due to the success of the Multi Schools Council, Kierran also hopes that in the coming years the forum will expand further across the East of England. As a result of their great work with young people, they have also been commissioned to lead an East of England SEND forum called Voices of the East.
There are a number of Essex based athletes hoping to be named in the Team GB squad crossing the channel to France in July including young track star Charlie Dobson, Move with Us ambassador and gymnast Courtney Tulloch and Friea Challis, a Braintree based BMX star who continues to break down the barriers girls face into BMXing after winning Young Sports Personality of the year at last year’s Essex Activity Awards.
Get Set continue to support our work with Children and Young People in Essex. This year we have partnered up with Team GB, Paralympics GB and Get Set to help deliver ‘Path to Paris’. ‘Path to Paris’ is a programme for Children and Young People to help them to travel virtually around the world to Paris by completing several different French based activities. Active Essex were lucky enough to host a livestream for the event at one of the exemplary special schools in Essex, Treetops Free School in Thurrock. The livestream was hosted by a member of the Get Set team and supported by Team GB para-swimmer Grace Harvey.
The legacy that the London 2012 games has left is clear to see and we hope that this year’s Paris 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic games continues to inspire the next generation in Essex.
