Beyond the Games 22 Partner Spotlight:

July 22, 2022 

In advance of our Beyond the Games 2022 forum in partnership with Sport England and UK Sport on the 26th July, we’re sharing insights from a few of our event partners on transforming communities through sport across a broad range of social issues. This week, read our interview with EVERFI UK’s Director of Marketing, Strategy and Impact, Kathryn McColl, who spoke to us about the combined power of sport and education. 

EVERFI UK, recently acquired by Blackbaud, drives social impact through education to address the most challenging issues affecting society, including financial wellness, mental health and other critical topics. With a goal to spark an education movement across the sports industry in the UK, the company helps sports brands and organisations make a difference in young people’s lives through digital and face-to-face educational initiatives. A few of its clients include the Premier League, ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), LTA, World Athletics, Team GB and Paralympics GB. 

With 20 years' experience in education and sport, Kathryn specialises in advising EVERFI clients on how they can make the greatest difference in the lives of young people, families and teachers. Below, she shared on the ways EVERFI uses sport to address social issues across the UK and globally. 

Beyond the Games 2022 will focus on sport’s role in addressing the UK’s most pressing social and sectoral issues. Where do you think sport can make the greatest difference? 

Sport has the power to capture people’s imagination and encourage them to think and behave differently. As a sector, I think we have the responsibility and ability to do two things. One is to provide more opportunities for everyone to be active, including limiting or addressing the barriers to participation for certain demographic groups and consulting with different audiences to ensure our solutions meet their needs.

The second is to use sport’s unique assets to better prepare young people for their futures. We want our young people to have skills such as resilience, teamwork, focus, respect, compassion and the ability to look after their own physical and mental health and wellbeing. Sports brands and organisations are well-placed to help develop these attributes in young people. 

What’s unique about the way EVERFI uses sport to address social issues? 

At EVERFI, we specialise in helping our clients make a difference in young people’s lives through education. We offer innovative and engaging educational content for use in classrooms, schools and homes, designed to make learning more relevant, exciting and fun for young people. This could be digital classroom resources that use real-life content from sport or stories from athletes, to help teach and reinforce key messages about topics as diverse as anti-discrimination, careers, climate change and STEM; or it could be advising clients on how they could increase participation in or improve the teaching of their sport and physical activity within schools. Our approaches are shaped by insights from real-life teachers and young people, to ensure they work and appeal to our target audiences.

EVERFI is also an edtech company. How can technology help sport initiatives?

The use of technology enables us to deliver our educational content at scale. It allows our clients to offer consistent, high-quality initiatives which are easy to access and can be delivered nationally, and even globally. It also enables us to track usage and to understand the impact of content through our own built-in surveys.

We often supplement our digital programmes with face-to-face interventions, especially in the sports space, when we recognise the value of participation and of allowing young people to meet inspirational role models in the flesh. Our programme with the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) in the US is a great example of this. We use our digital platform to deliver curriculum-linked and sport-themed STEM content to schools and complement this with real-world activities involving NHL players and local clubs. Since its inception eight years ago, this programme has impacted over 3.5 million learners. 

Why do you think schools are a particularly effective channel for delivering social impact? 

Schools are at the heart of communities; through them, you can reach everybody including teachers, students and their families at home. Working through schools allows us to reach a large audience all at once, thousands of people in all kinds of communities, urban and rural, more and less affluent. The UK has passionate and committed teachers who want to develop well-rounded individuals and value physical and mental wellbeing, but don’t always have the time to develop or find extraordinary resources. If an organisation develops an initiative that meets its needs, is linked to the curriculum and delivers a truly engaging experience, teachers will pay attention. 

Which project are you most proud of?  

I’m going to say Get Set, particularly as this month marks the 10^th anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Get Set launched in 2008 as the education programme for the London 2012 Games and then handed to the British Olympic Foundation and British Paralympic Association after the Games ended. Since then, we’ve been delivering Get Set for them and are thoroughly proud of the fact that over the last 10 years, 93% of UK schools have taken part in Get Set activities. Together we have engaged a significant number of partners and funders in the programme, including Aldi, Sport England, UK Anti-Doping and the LTA, and helped children move more, eat more healthily, promote inclusion and volunteer in their local communities. 

We are very proud of this partnership; it shows how social initiatives linked to major events can be long-lasting and continue to impact the public for years and years. 

Why are you looking forward to Beyond the Games 2022? 

We’re really looking forward to talking to and learning from an interesting and diverse guest list. Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, learning from and interacting with others from the sector is more valuable than ever! Plus, we’re also looking forward to presenting with our partners, British Olympic Association, British Paralympic Association and the ECB, and to sharing how we’re using schools as a powerful channel to encourage all young people to become more active. 

Register for Beyond the Games 2022 today. Join representatives from Brands, Teams & Leagues, NGOs, Rights Holders, Local Authorities, International Federations, National Governing Bodies and Academia at Birmingham's Villa Park as we focus on sport's role in Tackling Inequalities, Health & Well-Being and Environmental Sustainability.

Header image: Paralympics GB cycling medallist Lora Fachie, and Team GB taekwondo medallist Bianca Walkden visit a school as part of Get Set, the youth engagement programme of the British Olympic Foundation and the British Paralympic Association

Image 1: (L) Children engaged in activity designed to raise awareness of the Paralympic Movement, part of the ‘I’m Possible’ programme developed by EVERFI for the International Paralympic Committee; (R) Kathryn McColl, Director of Marketing, Strategy and Impact, EVERFI UK

Image 2 - Wes Morgan, Leicester City captain, stars in a campaign to encourage children’s writing skills, part of Premier League’s Primary Stars programme. The initiative reaches over 84% of primary schools in England and Wales with campaign themes varying from curriculum topics to anti-racism and wellbeing.