Our 'This Woman Can' group has been going strong for three years, serving local 40+ women of the
St Austell Bay area plenty of opportunities to try
a wide range of different sports and sports in a
friendly and supportive environment.
Our this ‘Woman Can Group’ has been going since 2022 and it is still gaining momentum. Funded initially by a £1000 grant from CRCC for a ‘This Gran Can’ group, we started using our varied taster session model with women aged 40 and over in the St Austell Bay area and it was really popular. It was named ‘This Gran Can’ as it was a playful pun suggested by one of our online wellness festivals supporters during lockdown as she had noticed our ‘This Girl Can’ stuff and was envious that the girls were getting all of the fun!!
After the successes of this first pilot project, we decided to do our first crowdfunding campaign to raise continuation funds to keep it going. Now called the more popular ‘This Woman Can’ we raised over £2500 with match funding from from Cornwall Council’s Social Inclusion Fund which stipulated that our group should have it’s own autonomy with a committee that guides the activity of the group. We now have a volunteer committee of 6 women who meet regularly to plan a varied and exciting programme of activities and events throughout the year, listening to the needs and wants of the group.
We introduced a membership structure in 2024 of £10/year which has stayed in place to help our group to subsidise some of our more pricey events and to try and keep the group sustainable and less reliant on grant funding. The member then gets access to an exclusive whatsapp group that shares ideas and gets priority booking as often our activities and events have limited ticket numbers. We currently have 47 paid up members which is already the same as in 2025. We also have a over 290 women on private facebook group for those who are interested but not yet committed to joining as a member.
Our programme is varied and interesting and runs year around including both indoor and outdoor activities. Some of the more unusual ones have been rifle shooting, ariel yoga, pole fitness, slacklining and archery. We also have recently done walking netball, kayaking, paddleboarding and football golf. A flier of our activities for the rest of February and March is included in this blog.
Our goals are (in no particular order):
- to create a supportive and friendly environment for women to try new things
- to increase physical activity in women by trying a wide variety of different sports and activities
- to reduce social isolation by getting active together
- to reduce the incidence of mental health difficulties by nurturing connections with each other and nature
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