Jersey Sports Association for the Disabled
Jersey Sports Association for the Disabled

AGM 2021

Headline:

 

  • Covid-19 (again, like last year...)
Paul Patterson MBE

 

 

Below you can read the full transcript of chairman Paul Patterson's report to the 2021 Annual General Meeting.

 

There really is only one word to use when summing up the past year of our history, ‘tough‘.  At various points in the past 12 months all of our sporting services have been suspended due to the ongoing restrictions forced on us all by the global pandemic.

 

During the long outages of sporting activity our sports leaders, coaches, volunteers and supporters have been occupied with planning safe restarts to sport in their respective areas as well as supporting our Members in new and different ways.  That support took the form of keeping in touch with each other by telephone or video calls, arranging online lockdown activities and generally trying to keep the spirits up.

 

It is remarkable that due to the challenges posed we have seen a record amount of time being allocated to supporting our Members by the back office of JSAD.  Suspending sports, keeping a watchful eye on the latest government guides and of course supporting service restart planning in what has become known as ‘the new normal‘.

 

Some sports, particularly the ones that can operate outside, did manage to make a return to operation, only to be closed down when the second wave of the pandemic hit us towards the end of 2020.

 

It is not just the sporting services that have been dramaticallty impacted over the past year, our ability to raise funds has all but totally disappeared as we have seen fundraising event after event cancelled.  The work of the Association has continued as best as possible so it is no surprise really that our Honorary Treasurer is reporting that we have spent far more than we have received.  In turn our plans for the coming year have been agreed with reduced scale until we can restart fundraising events.

 

The present situation however is more encouraging, summer is on the way and we are seeing all of our operational areas restarting, including some activity that has not operated for over a year now.  The restart of activity will be a slow process as many will be anxious about returning to meeting people in person.  That said, those who are returning are visibly happy to be back and are again enjoying all the benefits of sport on their overall wellbeing.

 

We are so fortunate in having such a vastly experienced team of sports leaders, coaches, volunteers and supporters who are busy guiding our service restart.  Our teams have mostly been together for many years and this is paying dividends as we see more activity return.

 

We are of course not out of the woods yet but there is certainly hope for a better future and a steady return to a more normal life for us all.

 

Thank you all for supporting JSAD in such extraordinary times.

 

 

 

Paul Patterson MBE

Chairman

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