A new project designed to tackle racism in Welsh sport is being launched later this week. BME Sport Cymru is a £500,000 two-year project co-funded by Sport Wales. The project aims to make sport in Wales more diverse. Rajma Begum, the project manager, says sport in Cardiff does not represent the community it’s serving when almost one in five people living in Cardiff are BME (Black and Ethnic Minority). Ms Begum says there are several barriers the BME community face when trying to partake in sport, including racism and discrimination.
BME Sport Cymru have planned days where they deliver training to sports centres about cultural awareness, barriers to participation, discrimination and diversity.
Rajma Begum has personally experienced stereotyping and racism when participating in sport in Cardiff. She says “I’m often faced by a receptionist in a leisure centre who will say ‘do you speak English?’ That will have a huge impact on me and whether I want to pay and take part and whether I will ever come back to that facility. More needs to be done because this is happening everywhere.”
Ali Abdi (pictured) is part of the Cardiff BME Sports Network and works at Grangetown Pavillion. He says “the biggest challenge has been to address the low participation rates of the BME community in sport, but now there are lots of government bodies asking how they can help increase sport access in communities in Cardiff.”
BME Sport Cymru will be launched in the Butetown area of Cardiff on Wednesday.
