The Just Jump Project

The Project's Mission:

To take jump rope (skipping) into schools / youth clubs / after school clubs as jump ‘Meets’ where teenagers experiment, learn from each other and lead the direction of their sessions rather than receive structured/official coaching.

Why:

Covid has made it even harder for physical activity to take place in school and out of school settings for young people. Participation in physical exercise drops off in teenage years and - especially amongst girls - never picks up again. The physical and mental health benefits offered by being physically active are too important to ignore.

Jump rope is an exceptionally cheap and affordable form of exercise which offers no preconceived notion of whether a child will be good/bad at it. It's an individual sport but can be done with others. It can be as simple, or as complex as one wants to make it. Where cycling, walking, running and other team sports all require leaving the house/ travelling a distance, skipping can be done with minimal space and without having to go anywhere.

Imagine if we were to give every child a jump rope plus the opportunity to be as creative as possible with it. That is what the Just Jump Project aims to do. Via a range of community fund raising, we want to provide a rope for a child in Greater Manchester plus a simple programme for school/ group leaders to follow which will show that child how to get the best out of it.

This project has already started at The Swinton Co-op Academy where 45 Year 11 students turned up for their first week, and 5 more in their second. The enthusiasm, joy and passion the students are already showing towards it is amazing and would be even more so if it was possible to roll it out further across GM!

We're aiming this initially at secondary school age simply because primary schools receive a physical activity fund from the government, whereas nothing like this exists for secondary age children; however that does not mean that we are excluding younger children from the project.

Benefits:

- confidence building

- Socially distanced sport

- Learning new skills

- Teaching others

- Leadership

- Coaching skills

- Creativity

- Resilience

What we need:

- A jump rope for each child. This has to be a freestyle rope which is made from recycled plastic beads if they are to be able to learn tricks and skills with them

- Someone to go into schools/clubs to initiate the first meet

- A safe website where students can access tutorials / videos of tricks and freestyle jump rope.

How we are raising this:

- Crowdfunding: Funnily enough, that's where YOU can come in! ;-)

- Skip 5k!! Helen, AKA The Skipping Bee, is undertaking the mammoth task of skipping 5k on December 27th! You can support her in raising funds by donating here!

- Spark Community membership funds: find out more about Spark Community and how to become a member here .

- Rope sales: When an adult buys a rope from us for £13, we donate a rope to a child. (Currently only available for local delivery + pick up).

- Gift a rope: like a suspended coffee scheme... but with ropes!

- Just Jump Community Meets: when we're allowed, adult/family jump meets where we can all have fun jumping rope together no class fee but instead, we'll ask participants to donate what they can.

- Funding bids: we have already applied to Sport England's small grants fund and are on the look out for other community physical activity funds we can apply for.

More about our non-profit organisation Spark Community:

If you'd like to know more about our non-profit unincorporated association, Spark Community, you can read more here.