Sporting success on the world stage gives us, the high-performance sport community, a unique platform from which to power positive, meaningful and lasting change for people and the planet or as it’s also described, to have a social impact.
The three impact areas where we have the credibility and ability to effect the greatest change are:
- Improving health and wellbeing - From prioritising the physical and mental wellbeing of every member of our high-performance sport community, supporting our staff, to empowering athletes to speak out about the adversity they’ve overcome and inspiring positive relationships with individual’s physical and mental wellbeing.
- Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) - We work to advance equality, diversity and inclusion within UK Sport and the high-performance community. We provide advice and engage with teams and funded partners to help them develop EDI initiatives and ensure that EDI is embedded into their core business – in line with our EDI Strategy.
- Driving environmental sustainability - From reducing our own negative environmental impact as a sector, to enhancing the knowledge, skills, confidence and capability of people who work across the high-performance sporting system and events.
We believe that in order to maximise high-performance sport’s contribution to positive change, we as UK Sport, and high-performance sport more broadly (including the Major Events into which we invest) must walk the walk when it comes to these impact areas.
In walking the walk, this provides credibility that further empowers athletes, sports and major events - whether individually or collectively - to harness their power and platform.
Why has UK Sport committed to powering positive change?
Powering positive change is also an essential component of creating a thriving sporting system – it underpins effective and sustainable NGB organisational health, enhancing our competitive advantage at world level.
These pressing issues are also important to sports fans and athletes.
Powering positive change gives us an opportunity to engage the public, ensuring Olympic and Paralympic sport remains relevant for a broader and more diverse fanbase and continues to bring value to society, the public and the government.