Get your group involved in Athletics Community Days

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Your running group is invited to join in with hosting an Athletics Community Day as part of an England Athletics campaign. You can receive support, rewards and be part of a national marketing campaign backed by the BBC, Channel 4 and LOCOG. (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games).

England Athletics is inviting clubs and running groups to host an Athletics Community Day between the Olympic and Paralympic Games (12th to 29th August 2012). An Athletics Community Day is part of the ‘Are you ready?’ campaign and is a chance for your group to come together and engage your local community at a time when interest in Athletics will be at an all time high!

It's easy to register your group!

Alongside Community Days, England Athletics will be promoting Run England groups as a way for people to get involved. As part of the online event page, people will be able to search for a running group near them using the Group Finder tool. This page will benefit from lots of traffic during the Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a great platform for your running group to be promoted on. There is nothing you need to do to take advantage of this promotion but there is an option to get further involved and achieve even greater exposure in the biggest shop window our sport has ever seen...

If your group would like to get further involved in the ‘Are you ready?’ campaign, you can register online. By registering your group, you will receive extra promotion for the dates you specify (between 12th and 29th August) and your group will be promoted alongside Athletics Community Days. To register your group, visit www.englandathletics.org/athleticscommunityday-signup – you will need to enter the time your group meets and the dates of the sessions you wish to promote specifically. You can promote as many sessions as you like. For your registered runs, you can just do your normal session or add something extra to make it even more social and welcoming for new comers, as well as something different for your current runners (e.g. go for some food and a drink after). It's as simple as that!

England Athletics will be supporting registered groups and affiliated athletics clubs to host their events by providing resources and promoting the events nationally and to our partners. Once signed up clubs and groups will receive a host's pack with a number of resources and there is further support available online.

Another benefit to hosting an event as part of the campaign is it will also be part of the Join in Local Sport Campaign. England Athletics are pleased to be working with LOCOG and the BBC to promote Community Days using the ‘Join in Local Sport’ initiative. ‘Join In’ is supported by Sport England, Seb Coe, David Moorcroft, the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association. Seb Coe, Chair of London 2012, said: “We are really happy to support the ‘Join In’ project, it is a great idea that means that thousands of people across the UK can turn up and take part in local sports just after the Olympic Games finishes. Millions will be inspired by what they witness over the summer and I hope this creates opportunities in every community for people to join in their local sports clubs.”

This is a fantastic platform for clubs to be promoted upon and will allow clubs to achieve exposure that would not be possible for an independent event.

Among all the benefits that hosting an event can bring, England Athletics is also offering groups and clubs some rewards and discounts for hosting an event.

• For more information on the events, the benefits, format and the support you will receive, download the information booklet here or from the very bottom of this page.
• For lots more resources go to our Resources page
• To sign up to host an event visit www.englandathletics.org/athleticscommunityday-signup
• For more information on Join In visit www.englandathletics.org/joinin