Local Focus: Sport Hawke's Bay's rainbow mission

It was a transgender student's sporting request that set Sport Hawke's Bay on its mission to get everyone moving.

"It all started last year with a sports organisation that was asking for our help in dealing with a school pupil who was transgender and wanting to play in a local competition," Sport Hawke's Bay Chief Executive Mark Aspden said.

"So helping that organisation develop policies to deal with that, taking account of the interests of the student involved and also the concerns the parents, coaches, other students might have."

Sport Hawke's Bay's mission is to get people moving, so it has decided to help remove barriers by creating a new role of inclusion manager.

The role is not only focused on the rainbow community. Aspden said the first focus is on the disabled community because its members could face greater challenges to being more physically active.

"People in the disabled community often want to be just as active as people outside that community.

"We want to support them to achieve their aspirations. That's the key part of it – it's not our aspirations, the aspiration of the club or the school - it is focusing on what the participant really wants."

The new role will be the first point of contact for individuals or organisations and comes at a time when many sporting organisations find interest waning.

"Sports organisations are dealing with dropping participation numbers. They are investigating themselves to what is leading to that – what some of the barriers are – and we are here to help them analyse and help to address them."

Sport Hawke's Bay is the first regional sports organisation to receive Rainbow Tick certification.

"The Rainbow Tick was something we saw as being relevant in terms of getting staff aware of issues around sexuality and gender diversity and making sure we were modelling the behaviour we thought was appropriate in the office, and that would underpin us being able to support sports organisations to do the same."

Made with funding from