The Columbia Threadneedle Foundation is Access Sport’s Principal Corporate Partner and we have worked together since 2013. The partnership has been instrumental to our work over the last decade and has had a far-reaching impact on the lives of many disabled and disadvantaged young people and their families.

During the current phase of our partnership, The Foundation has supported Access Sport on a number of important projects and innovations including an anti-knife crime pilot project in London, providing ongoing support to our inclusive community clubs during and following the pandemic, supporting the development of a new community cycling club in Bexley, London, as well as supporting our key events and our strategic growth as an organisation.

Our partnership began in 2013 when Columbia Threadneedle teamed up with Access Sport to develop Tri-3-Sportz, a legacy programme designed to break down barriers to triathlon and make the sport more accessible to young people in London.

Building on the success of Tri-3 Sportz, we worked with The Foundation to enable 1,000 disadvantaged young people to develop the core physical literacy skills of running, cycling and swimming - specifically enabling inactive teenagers to become active and to benefit from lifestyle and health improvements. To achieve this we worked with a number of different community sports clubs across London and Bristol, developing opportunities for more disadvantaged young people to develop these key, physical literacy skills.

Since the start of our partnership, Columbia Threadneedle staff have volunteered with Access Sport, often supporting our cycling inclusion work including helping us deliver our ‘School Games’ events, carrying out routine maintenance and track improvements at our cycling facilities and also helping our qualified coaches to deliver summer cycling sessions to children over the school holidays. Columbia Threadneedle staff have also helped facilitate a Flyerz inclusive hockey tournament.

We are delighted that Columbia Threadneedle will also be taking on an active challenge as part of #ChallengeAccessSport

This is not the first time that Columbia Threadneedle staff will be coming together to fundraise for Access Sport – we have also had teams take part in ITU Team Triathlons and the Coast 500 in support of our partnership.

We look forward to continuing our work with The Columbia Threadneedle Foundation during the years ahead, to enable even more disabled and disadvantaged young people to access the benefits of sport.