The All-Sports Ministry of PA NJ & DE - Executive Summary Start-Up Budget & Prospectus

The All-Sports Ministry of Pennsylvania,
New Jersey & Delaware
Statement of Need - In The Nation
According to ESPN Magazine, nationwide, more than 60% of age-eligible kids do not
get to participate in Youth Sports programming in the new millennium. 1 Inner-city riskfactors,
we believe, significantly exacerbate these discrepancies.
Never-the-less, communities across the country continually seek safe, accessible, and
affordable venues for young people within their communities to exercise and play.
Public schools have a variety of recreational facilities—gymnasiums, playgrounds,
fields, courts, and tracks—where people can engage in physical activity. In low-income
communities, however, these schools are unavailable, even through they often appear
to be the only place to find safe and inexpensive recreation facilities.
Unfortunately, these spaces are often locked and inaccessible to the community during
non-school hours due to concerns about resources, maintenance, security, and liability.
The good news is that [other community stakeholders are beginning to embrace]
shared-use as a strategy to create more opportunities for physical activity.
“Shared-use” – also called “joint-use” or “community-use” – occurs when local entities,
or sometimes private, nonprofit organizations, agree to open or broaden access to their
facilities for community use. Shared-use can take place on a formal basis (based on a
written, legal document) or on an informal basis (based on historical practice).
Many community and faith-based entities are increasingly recognizing that providing
access to existing recreational facilities is one of the most promising strategies for
building more opportunities for physical activity. In an era of budget shortfalls,
maximizing access to existing facilities – rather than developing new ones – can be an
efficient and economical use of local resources.
Advancing Social Equity
Now when it comes to recreational space, not all neighborhoods are created equal.
Low-income communities and communities of color consistently have the fewest parks
and recreational facilities in any given metropolitan venue. In some communities, the
recreational facilities that do exist may seem unsafe, may be hard to get to by foot, bike,
or bus, and may be poorly maintained due to insufficient funding. This means that
residents of these neighborhoods often have very few, or inadequate, opportunities for
physical activity. This is reflected in disparities in health outcomes.
1
http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/9469252/hidden-demographics-youth-sports-espn-magazine
Page 7 of 45