The goal of these social club evenings is to bring the equality work of coaching closer to the everyday club work and to empower female coaches working in clubs. The participants of these social club evenings have been active coaches, new potential coaches interested in coaching and active players.
The social club evenings have been promoted as low-threshold events, where one can get to know other women working in the sport, establish connections and network.
Most of the participants in the social club evenings have been players. As a result of the evening's discussions and the program, several of them became interested in coaching. In particular, the possibility to have an easy access to coaching, information on various support materials as well as trainings was seen as useful. Based on the feedback received from the participants, discussions on the coach's role and expectations on the coach were perceived as interesting.
- It would be great to brainstorm ideas on the type of activities one could be involved in; in single events or in weekly activities. It is exactly in events such as these, where a spark is ignited to start one’s active participation in club activities or even to start one’s journey as an instructor or a coach, stated in feedback from social club evening.
During 2023, 5-10 social club evenings will be organized in cooperation with sports participating in the project. In addition, social evenings will be organized in cooperation with the Open Doors project of the Paralympic Committee.
The sports associations committed to the racket games project together with the Finnish Coaches Association are the Finnish Padel Federation, the Finnish Table Tennis Association, the Badminton Finland, the Finnish Squash Association and the Finnish Tennis Association. In addition to sports federations, the project's background communities are the Finnish Professional Coaches Association (SAVAL), the Finnish Olympic Committee and the Finnish Paralympic Committee.
The main goal of the project is to increase the total number of female coaches, and especially the number of top coaches, as well as to support and create a support network for female coaches who are already active.
