Benefits To Codicote

Youth

‘There’s nothing to do’ – how often have those words been heard not just these days but for years? And, as we all know, the easy option is to sit back and do nothing in the often vain hope that ‘the kids’ will find something and ‘stop being a nuisance’.

But what about doing something pro-active – meeting the challenge head on and providing some infrastructure to ensure that there is more to do – build on a great Primary School development and youngsters participation in the Sports Clubs with more youth groups, games nights, sessions that meet and accommodate the needs of our youngsters with regard to music, art, drama and urban dance. A lot of this happens in small pockets now but we propose a place where this can be fully housed and co-ordinated which will be recognised as the place to go and where things happen.

AND this is also where the key aims of youth, community and sport overlap.

Community

The club is used consistently throughout the year, not just for post match celebrations and commiserations, but there are also birthday parties and dance sessions, quizzes and live music, weddings, funerals and christenings, art classes and bonfire parties, Village Day celebrations and pop festivals – all proving how much it has become a fundamental and critical part of village community life.

Codicote, however, deserves better – a new Sports and Community Centre that will serve the village for generations to come.

Codicote has a diverse population of c 3,500 residents but the new centre would not just be for Codicote. It could serve all the villages around – and, indeed some of the towns.

The new Centre is about the wider community – facilitating sport and providing opportunities for youth , reducing obesity across all ages , giving people a place to relax and meet socially around shared activities and involving the older members of our population in recreational and social activity We will succeed by making this venture serve the community in its entirety.

The benefits are obvious and will create a momentum that will be of increasing value – what we need first is the Centre itself!

Sport

Did you realise what a success we have in sport already in Codicote - from the excellent introduction into sport via Codicote Primary School through to the outstanding growth in the sports clubs.

With the main three sports, we have 200 tennis club members, 50 cricketers and 110 footballers (male, female and all ages) playing either for fun or in competitive leagues and, like the Primary School, attaining recognised national standards of excellence such as Clubmark.

However the Sports Survey undertaken in Codicote highlighted a need for new sports – basketball, netball, volleyball, aerobics, dancing, indoor five–a-side football/futsal, indoor tennis, indoor cricket nets, table tennis (now started), improved badminton facilities – all of which would benefit further not just the residents of Codicote but anyone who lives in the area and, indeed, local schools who would have the regular use of state of the art facilities to extend their excellence in sport.