Nominations close on Saturday 31st August for SPAR’s community sports programme, The People’s Podium.
During the summer, members of the public locally and in England, Scotland and Wales, have been putting forward thousands of nominations for local unsung sporting heroes who work tirelessly to help their local sports team, club or sporting project.
This is the second year of the SPAR NI and SPAR UK initiative and nominations must be made by the August 31 closing date, via SPAR NI’s Facebook page, or online at spar-ni.co.uk.
To enter, nominators simply need to either comment on the brand’s page or fill in the entry form on the website with their nominee’s name, job, club or organisation and also why they should win.
The People’s Podium campaign has partnered with well-known television presenter Andi Peters who has promoted the call-to-action from his own platforms. The overall winner receives £10,000 of funding for their project and an additional four projects will each be awarded £2000 to help develop their club or initiative. The winners will be announced in October.
Last year’s NI regional winner was coach and founder of Shankill Road based Abbey Gymnastics, Alison McMullan. Alison used the funding award to help take a troupe of young gymnasts in July 2019 to represent Northern Ireland at the 2019 World Gymnastraeda in Austria.
“Everyone had a wonderful time at this international festival where we joined over 20,000 participants from 60 countries globally. It was such a brilliant learning and development experience for all our members and they thoroughly enjoyed performing our specially choregraphed ‘A Belfast Story’ routine in front of a very appreciative audience.
“Winning our People’s Podium award in 2018 allowed us to bring along more young people enabling them to benefit from this very special experience. Everyone drew so much confidence from our performance and from meeting fellow gymnasts from all over the world.”
Bronagh Luke, Head of Corporate Marketing at Henderson Group, owners of the SPAR brand in Northern Ireland added; “Local initiatives which encourage activities, sports and team play really bring together a community, which is a huge part of our ethos at SPAR NI.
“Northern Ireland is currently leading the way on the number of People’s Podium nominations submitted with well over 1000, but we are urging everyone who hasn’t put forward their community sporting hero to log on now and make their nomination.
“Our inaugural winner from 2018, Alison McMullan and Abbey Gymnastics, is a fantastic example of a sporting organisation that really makes a difference to young lives. I’m sure our 2019 winner will be equally worthy and we’re looking forward to finding out who this year’s People’s Podium champions will be.”
With almost 300 stores in Northern Ireland, SPAR is at the heart of local communities. The People’s Podium campaign is a demonstration of SPAR’s commitment to always be there to support local people and their communities, anytime and anywhere.
For updates on the winning project, follow SPAR NI on Facebook and Twitter or visit sparni.co.uk/peoplespodium.
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