Location and general information
Access to Sport - 
Children with disabilities - 
Personal developmentContext
The Fitba First project invests in young, vulnerable primary schoolchildren living in poverty across deprived areas of Scotland. It aims to maximise their future prospects for health and well-being by providing free-to-access fun football activities, health education and hot, healthy meals.
Project content
This project aims to invest in 600 young primary school children all across Scotland to help maximise their future health and well-being by providing fun, free-to-access football activities, positive nutritional messages, healthy meals (breakfast and lunch) and bespoke training in sports first aid.
Objectives
To provide 600 young primary school children with opportunities to take part in the following free activities during school holiday periods:
Football
- Free activities help reduce the financial barriers facing many children in Scotland. The project aims to use the positive medium of football to create a sense of inclusion at the same time as improving the participants' physical and mental well-being.
Sports first-aid training
- Educating children through sport. Increasing knowledge and understanding. Increasing confidence. Developing life-saving skills. Safer sport/safer communities.
- What to do in an emergency. How to call an ambulance. Chest compressions. Using a defibrillator.
- What do to if someone chokes. What to do is someone’s bleeding. When and how to use ice on injuries. How to help someone having an asthma attack.
Meals and positive nutritional messages
- Tackling food inequalities during school holidays with the provision of free healthy breakfasts and lunches, while sending positive nutritional messages about leading a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
Project activities
Hour 1 - Football and fitness session
Session structure:
- Structured warm-ups and cool-downs
- Weekly football themes – passing, dribbling, technique and control, shooting, defending and football agility
- Fun game-related activities
- Team-building and problem-solving activities focusing on improving confidence, communication, team-work, decision-making, respect for others and developing participants’ cognitive skills
- Small-sided games – fun and competitive play and freedom of expression
Hour 2 – Positive nutritional messages and healthy, hot, homemade meal
Session structure:
- The Eatwell Guide
- Food groups and their purpose
- Water and hydration
- Energy values
- Healthy cooked meal
- Personal hygiene – washing hands and table manners
Expected results
- Provide opportunities for 600 young disadvantaged children to take part in the Fitba Firs project, helping them to become happier, healthier and more engaged through the delivery of 9,600 individual hours of football activity and health education
- Encouraging and enabling the inactive to be active
- Developing physical confidence and competence from the earliest age
- Improving opportunities to participate, progress and achieve in sport
- Supporting the well-being and resilience of communities through physical activity and sport
- Tackling food inequality
Partner
