Last week, Bristol Rovers Community Trust student Sammy Phillips spent three days working alongside our media team as part of his work experience module. Sammy spent an afternoon with our 'Rebound with Rovers' group to take some pics and chat to project lead, Costa Chard.
On Wednesday afternoon I was invited to come check out and take some photos of the Rebound with Rovers session, which is a free mental-health football group for those looking to bounce back and kick-start their mental fitness.
I asked project lead Costa Chard some questions about the programme which has been running for over a year now.
When we asked Costa what ‘Rebound With Rovers’ is all about he told us “Rebound With Rovers is our mental health and mental fitness project at Bristol Rovers Community Trust which is supported by the GFA as well. Rebound with Rovers is combining sports, physical fitness and mental health discussions, in a safe and secure environment. We start with an hour of football followed by a check-up session where people get the chance to share how they're feeling, how their week has gone and again, find that physical and mental improvement”
Costa explained how the sessions work, “So a bit like what I just said to be honest, we have an hour long football session which could be drills to just a general football session, then the last hour is a check out session where we meet up and have a chance to discuss the session and give a number out of 10 based on everyone's mental health and why they gave that number”
We then discussed what the feedback is like from the participants which he said “Yeah the feedback is really good. We generally have a constant rise in numbers, which has left us over-subscribed and we cannot take more people on for the sessions, so we have to extend the adult session which is obviously very good, so I would say feedback has been very positive and we have even had people coming back saying how much they have enjoyed it so I would say that the response has been excellent”
My final question for Costa was what what he thought the future holds for the project which he responded with “As the project lead, my aim is to have an ongoing project and I'd like to take this further afield. I would like it to expand especially, for adults which I think there are limited facilities to incorporate people who suffer with mental health, and this is something we need to speak about more and that’s what my aim is for Rebound With Rovers to try and grow have many more sessions to reach to the wider community who need that support”
I would like to thank Costa for taking the time to chat with me, and if you would like to get involved then you can click here or follow the Twitter page for regular updates: @Rebound_Rovers
Commentaires