Get Online, Get Active with US!

Well, 15 weeks from launching our Get Online Get Active (GOGA) timetable, we delivered our final online yoga session on Saturday 29th May!

Over the 15 week period we have had free ZOOM sessions delivered weekly by six amazing, inspiring trainers / teachers:  Yogacell, Yoga with Grace, Yoga with Hossein, Angus Smith Personal Trainer, Gemma Ramage Wellness, Control and Move Fitness.

The weekly sessions included: Yin Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Boxercise, Body Weight Strength and street dance classes

 

Rationale for GOGA

We launched Get Online Get Active crowdfunding campaign on Spacehive in November 2020.  The aim of the project was to provide access to a regular timetable of free, online fitness classes for ANY young person aged between 12 and 25. GOGA was developed against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and its widely reported negative impact on the mental health of children and young people.  Since March 2020 lockdowns resulted in children and young people being unable to access not only school, college or work, but also the sports and other leisure activities they enjoyed in their ‘normal’ lives. We saw the GOGA project as an opportunity to meet the needs and improve the lives of a wider group of young people.

US is a charity that provides access to sport and exercise for young people experiencing mental health difficulties. We do this because there is clear evidence that exercise not only improves physical but also mental health, whilst it helps raise confidence, self-esteem and social skills-all of which has a very important impact on young people’s lives.   For US, COVID-19 meant that all of our previously ‘face-to-face’ activities for young people had to stop during lockdown, and we needed to find an alternative way to continue our support – that inevitably meant moving online. Sixteen months on, and taking into account the massive global adoption of online communication tools, it doesn’t seem such a huge transition for US to move our delivery online, but at the time it was new and untested for US. 

As with the wider population, we found that some of our young people embraced the move online, whilst others preferred ‘real-life’ engagement and resisted the technology.  Whilst this meant that we weren’t able to continue all our work, it meant that we could continue to provide opportunities for our young people should they wish to accept them and so offered both live sessions delivery as well as a bank of recorded exercise sessions.

The Autumn saw the nation fall from a Summer of recovery into a second wave.  It was at this point that we decided to seek funding to extend our targeted work into a wider offer to all young people feeling isolated and affected by COVID, and GOGA was born - 105 online yoga and relaxation and fitness training sessions over 15 weeks to help support the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 12 to 25 as they cope with COVID-19.

 

Pre- Launch developments

To develop GOGA, the preparative work we included in our crowdfunding campaign was planning a timetable of appealing sessions, the development of our website, and marketing to promote the project.

We produced our timetable by selecting trainers who we knew could both effectively engage with young people and deliver well in a virtual setting.  In terms of session timings, we tried to schedule them at times when each identified age group was most likely to be available.

Our new GOGA webpage and online booking system were developed for US by local web designers Elmnet Design. We included descriptions of the activities being offered, trainer bios as well as an interactive calendar to provide a clear picture to young people, their parents, and professionals.

The webpage was a success, with lots of positive feedback about its visual appearance and ease to use.

 

Marketing and Awareness-raising

We developed an identity for GOGA to complement the webpage and generated a range of marketing resources to promote the project.

We engaged local company Indigo Wolf Marketing to support us with our launch campaign, and they secured coverage of US and GOGA in local online publications: Living North and Northern Insight Magazine, as well as a ‘spot’ on Night Owls with Alan Robson on Greatest Hits Radio, and further sharing across social media from a range of services focussed around children and young people, sports, and mental health.

US has established partnerships within the school and education sector in the North East. We targeted all schools in the region through email and social media, and received a supportive response to GOGA: through posting on their social media, including information in school-to-home communications, and by cascading through Year group and pastoral systems.

We made our partners agencies from health, social care, justice, community and voluntary sectors..and beyond, aware of GOGA through email contacts and marketing materials - Its true to say the entire US team worked intensively to spread the GOGA message!

To achieve a wider community reach we promoted GOGA through Facebook groups across the region, and used paid adverts on Facebook and Instagram to extend GOGA exposure beyond our own following. Two campaigns were used, one to target young people aged 13-25, and another targeting an older age group, aimed at parents and professionals working with young people in the 12-25 age group. The two campaigns achieved a reach of over 29K people and generated 299 direct engagements with our webpage.

North of Tyne Combined Authority not only supported GOGA financially with a contribution to our crowdfunding campaign, they also supported us with awareness-raising through their channels.  It was great to meet (albeit virtually!) with Counsellor Joyce McCarty in March and to have the opportunity to talk about our project and how it was part of our charity’s commitment to improving the mental health of young people – links to our regional local authorities offer a fantastic gateway for US to increase awareness of what we do with many of the core / statutory services supporting young people - for example we have recently established a new link with the Skillshub at Newcastle City Library, and are planning ways of working together to support their clients.

 

 

Participation

Our weekly timetable was launched on Monday 15th February and ran for 15 weeks to 29th May 2021. Over the period we offered 90 sessions delivered by 6 local, qualified and vetted trainers. We based the timetable on three 5-week blocks to give us the opportunity to review delivery and to identify any changes required; in the first block we swapped a trainer due to illness, in later sessions we dropped sessions that were less popular, and during the final block we introduced a street dance session to broaden the offer.

Three of the trainers were established trainers who have previously worked with our participants: Yogacell, Angus Smith Personal Trainer, Gemma Ramage Wellness.  Three others we engaged because of their delivery skills in a particular specialism: Yoga with Grace, Yoga with Hossein and Control and Move Dance.

We offered Body Weight Strengthening, Boxercise and Street-dance sessions for their ‘mood lifting’ benefits on young people who are missing their usual activities and who are spending more time alone. Vinyasa Flow and Ying Yoga sessions offered techniques to help people to relax and deal with feelings of anxiety. Our overarching aim in developing the timetable was to offer opportunities for the young people to develop their own strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety which in turn reduce the chance of them developing further mental health problems which require treatment, or which have a life-altering impact.

Initially young people accessed GOGA via the booking system on the website, which provided them with the link to our ZOOM sessions.  For simplicity, we retained the same links for each timetabled session week on week, and our booking app also allowed young people to go to the calendar on our website in the run-up to the session and easily link through to the class.  For US, these were important tools that reduced the barriers to a young person accessing our offer, and in terms of sustainability will be an approach we will use in the future. Over the duration of the programme 38 young people engaged with GOGA. It is anticipated that more will engage in the future as sessions are recorded and we will continue to publicise and make them freely available to website visitors and all of our partner agencies across the region.

Although we were disappointed by the initial participation numbers, we were pleased with:

• Positive session observations and high-quality delivery
• Repeated attendance by participants

• Positive feedback from participants
• New agencies introducing young people to our offer e.g. Clic Sargent

Having considered the external influences at the time of delivery and taking into account feedback received directly from young people, GOGA was significantly impacted by ZOOM fatigue. A major factor for those of school age, was that during the first block they were engaged in full-time online schooling which meant that they didn’t then want to spend more time participating in online leisure sessions too!

There were some key positives which came from GOGA, most namely that:

• Some of our current and previously referred young people engaged in a consistent way with GOGA sessions, strengthening the support we could offer for those identified as experiencing or being at risk of, mental health difficulties.
• We received new bookings onto GOGA for young people who would be in our identified cohorts for targeted support, and were, therefore, able to engage with these young people and identify whether support beyond GOGA would benefit their health/wellbeing.
• We were able to use GOGA as a progression pathway for supported young people moving from intensive US programmes, into a small-cohort online session, with a view to then progressing into other online or community sessions without US support.
• Sessions have been recorded and are currently being edited ready for upload to our website library. These will then be available to young people to access at any point in the future.

Following the online delivery, we have spent £4,656 of the £5,277 crowdfunded. This reflects a decrease in classes over the 15 weeks from 105 to 90 - however we extended the Streetdance class beyond the GOGA  period, delivering an additional 4 sessions in June - and also savings against budget for both development work and session delivery.

The £621 of remaining crowdfunds will be used in a way that aligns to the evolving COVID position, hopefully where restrictions are lifted and a cautious approach to returning to everyday activities. We will use this funding to:

• Fund further activities for those young people from our targeted groups who accessed GOGA – either online or face to face
• Fund activities for young people referred to US who are experiencing mental health difficulties following the pandemic - either online or face to face
• For delivery of our broader work with young people, for example yoga groups for young people with exam anxiety, or summer activities for young people whose life circumstances make them vulnerable to mental health difficulties e.g Young Carers.
• To cover any additional costs incurred from editing and uploading the recorded sessions to the website

 

Impact of GOGA

We believe that GOGA has made a significant impact on both US as a charity and also the young people who have taken part in it. Here are some explanations of how:

• The US website now has the functionality for young people to enrol themselves on new activities, and to access stored classes.
• The US profile has been raised with many more people and organisations across the North East as a result of the marketing and publicity; and it is probably no coincidence that since February referrals have significantly increased
• The US team has discovered crowdfunding and understands its challenges and benefits
• The US team have developed its Social media skills and has a greater understanding of its benefits and limitations
• The GOGA project does not end here – a bank of outstanding sessions will be available in the future for our young people
• Comments from participants:

“I've really benefited from all the fitness sessions offered. The sessions have boosted my confidence as a result of my physical health improving therein. Having suffered from an acute mental illness that resulted in me having to heavily rely on medication that caused me to gain weight, I developed a low self-esteem and was caught in a vicious cycle of feeling unworthy because of my body image which in turn caused me to gain even more weight. Since my first session with uSactive, I've seen my body transition back to its former pre-medication state and my confidence is slowly but surely returning too!!! What I'm most grateful for is that all my uSactive trainers have allowed me to appreciate that a holistic and healthy lifestyle is far more important than said body image.”  X

“Online sessions have filled some of his time up and given him a purpose during lockdown” Y

“I’d done online yoga with my mum before, and really liked that the yoga I went to was just for younger people not adults! I feel good after I’ve done a class” Z

Once more, we would like to thank everyone who supported US and GOGA!