From October 2013, North Ayrshire Table Tennis Club have been working alongside the Voluntary Action Fund on raising the awareness of sectarianism and educating our club members on what problems it causes in our local community. Members of our committee attended a number of training days and workshops to learn of the problems of sectarianism and how to tackle it. We ran classroom based activities, facilitated discussions and handed out questionnaires to our club members & school children involved in table tennis, to get them talking about sectarianism and hearing their views on the subject. We held several successful inter school tournaments and training days where pupils from different schools were playing with and against each other.
We held a project finale table tennis tournament on March 27th in which over 45 pupils from Ardrossan Academy and St Matthews attended. This was a fantastic turnout and included pupils who have just started playing table tennis due this program. At the end of our Stand Up to Sectarianism Project, we found the vast majority of our members have a better understanding of the subject of sectarianism and are aware that there is a underlying problem within our community. Pictures of the finale table tennis event can be viewed http://goo.gl/H6IyOR