About Us

Our Vision

To be the number one sport for participation and opportunities across Wales, underpinned by a World Class Development Programme. We will achieve this by being a sector leading organisation for governance, collaboration, innovation and modernisation

This vision is underpinned by:

• A One-team approach – everyone working towards a common objective
• Clarity of purpose - for everyone including regions, clubs, volunteers
• Support our clubs to overcome the challenges they have highlighted

We have distilled down the feedback and discussions into our 6 goals:

Read the full Strategy document 

Our vision supports the overall Vision for Sport in Wales

Stakeholder Views

We engaged with many stakeholders across Wales through 14 open forums, a widely publicised online questionnaire and hosting a series of club and 1 to 1 meetings.

Views were sought and expressed aligned to the following key areas:

• Clubs, Coaching, Competition, Junior athletes, Volunteering, officials, facilities and communication from the Governing Body.

Welsh Athletics conducted extensive consultations with membership in 2018 and saw close to 400 members engage with us. We heard consistency is the greatest challenges facing our clubs across Wales and thirteen points were highlighted for further consideration:

1. Recruit and develop coaches/leaders – aligning education and development – local delivery, short time commitments – technical events need specific focus - the need for a designated person who leads on coaching
2. Professionalise Coaching – make it a desired vocation, challenge for improvement
3. Recruit and develop officials – reward and recognise officials – viewed as a major challenge for the sport going forward
4. Improve communication of key / inspiring messages – raise the profile of the sport – better use of ‘stars’ to inspire the next generation
5. Clarify the roles of the clubs/regions – make the club environment more welcoming
6. Reduce the admin burden for volunteers/clubs/parents – improve use of technology and keep it simple
7. Support clubs to modernise – improve the culture within clubs – make them more welcoming and engaging
8. Ensure that all key stakeholders are aware of their role in developing athletes – will assist with increasing retention rates
9. Establish a clear competition pathway
10. Work to simplify the sport and keep it fun
11. Use the sport as a vehicle to deliver health benefits – physical activity and wellbeing
12. Create Champions to inspire the Nation – don’t focus just on mass market
13. Improving number and quality of facilities across Wales – access needs improving
14. Coaching, Competition, Clubs – The 3 C’s – effective collaboration between them all

 

We continue to engage with our membership to ensure that your views are heard and that our sport continues to develop. It is vital that we as a sport continue to innovate and ensure our sport remain relevant at all ages. To support this, we aim to establish a series of young athlete forum’s so that we can engage the views of our junior athletes – with further information provided shortly. In the meantime, we welcome the views of our membership so please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss the new strategy.

James Williams, Chief Executive