Lewisham charity for young athletes receives £7,000 grant from National Lottery

A charity formed to create a pathway for young athletes to reach Olympic level has been given a grant by Sport England to steer young people away from knife and gang crime.

GMAX Trackstars Athletic Academy in Lewisham has been awarded £7,037 of National Lottery funding from Sport England’s Community Emergency Fund towards online training sessions for young people.

It will help maintain the work of Dragonfly Yoga studio, which supports the charity with the profits earned during the coronavirus pandemic.

The grant will allow GMAX to cover some of the expenditure toward developing sustainability of the GMAX projects with young people in Lewisham who will need, now more than ever before, opportunity to participate in physical activity.

GMAX chief executive Mark Lancaster said: “Getting young people to engage in physical activity with this Sports England Emergency funding will help GMAX to continue the top priority tasks in engaging our young people online and making preparation for post Covid-19 lockdown.

“We’re so thrilled to receive the grant award. Of course, we could not forget the generous support of everyone who has donated already.

“We would like to thank Sports England for their incredibly generous grant donation which will be helping us to take steps towards delivering our vital work with disadvantaged young people and maintaining our trading activity in our Dragonfly Yoga Studio that has been closed due to the lockdown.”

The outbreak of the virus and the consequent shutdown of businesses as of March 23 has left the sport and physical activity sector facing a period of uncertainty.

In response, on March 31 Sport England announced a £195m package to help the sport and physical activity sector through lockdown.

Tim Hollingsworth, Sport England’s chief executive, said: “As the body responsible for the growth of sport and physical activity participation, we want the vital grassroots organisations that make sport and physical activity happen in this country to not just to come through this crisis but to be in a position to thrive again in the future.

“The £20m Community Emergency fund, made possible by National Lottery players, is part of a multimillion pound package of support we are providing to ease the pressure on a huge number of the organisations who are central to the nation’s health and wellbeing.

“We are proud to be able to provide vital funding to GMAX Trackstars to help it through these extremely challenging times.”