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A message from the CEO - Annual Report 2021-22
Tēnā koutou katoa,
We’re now 12 months in to our 2022-’26 Strategic Plan and, as I reflect back on the year, I’m most proud of the momentum we’ve established in that time. Our whole team is stepping with purpose towards our strategic goals to get the less active more active, and to create a highly collaborative, capable and functioning physical activity system in our rohe.
That momentum has only been possible because of the energy and solutions-focussed attitudes of the Sport Bay of Plenty team. In 2022 we entered a new strategic period against the backdrop of a global pandemic. Covid-19 and the associated public health responses had measurable impacts upon physical activity, and the effects are still being felt. As a result, our work has had to respond to changed physical activity behaviours that developed across the most critical and disruptive pandemic years. Our team, however, has embraced those challenges with agility and a steady resolve.
Insights and sector intelligence have been critical to that agility. An annual secondary school survey known as Voice of Rangatahi has enabled us to understand the motivations and barriers of Bay of Plenty’s ranagatahi, and a new Neighbourhood Play System survey helped identify play provisions, opportunities and barriers in Tauranga’s Tūtarawānanga-Merivale suburb. Alongside a locally-led approach to our work, both of these surveys and associated insights have been critical to translating community needs and aspirations to key stakeholders such as local councils.
We also continue to strengthen proven areas of work such as our CoachForce development initiative and healthy lifestyle programmes, support regional and national sports organisations and translate the benefits of physical activity into education and health settings. This year we also embraced new approaches to extend our impact and physical activity opportunities into underrepresented communities. This included a successful health programme pilot in Murupara, partnerships with sport organisations to support the development of new opportunities for young women and girls, and the formal commitment to the new national Regional Sport Trust Network that paves the ways for sports trusts to advocate as one and amplify impact to a national level.
A special thanks to our partners Sport New Zealand and BayTrust whose continuing support enables us to smartly adapt our approach to ensure the greatest impact over time. Thanks also to our senior leadership team for their logical thinking and determination to stare down our greatest challenges, and to our Board for their strategic support and enquiry via quality governance.
Looking ahead to the medium and long-term future, we will continue to face many challenges that will require resolve and adaptability. Effective advocacy remains essential to positioning physical activity as a community priority that can deliver broader stakeholder aspirations; recruitment and retention will remain key to maintaining a workforce that can advocate and innovate for strategic impact; continuing inflationary pressures are requiring us to consider, now more than ever, how we overcome the cost and time barriers to increase physical activity; and the impacts of various weather events earlier this year has brought into sharp focus the need for our sector to play its part to reduce carbon emissions and develop long-term resilience against the effects of a changing climate.
None of these challenges will be easy, but none are insurmountable. With collaboration, a systems-approach and a commitment to understand, work with and enable local communities I am confident we are building a bright future where lives are transformed through physical activity.
Noho ora mai,
Heidi Lichtwark – Sport Bay of Plenty chief executive
