For 23 years Raza Sadiq has helped thousands of young people from ethnically diverse communities to have better access to opportunities in employment and sport, promoted diversity and inclusion and turned Active Life Club into a hub which helps its community to prosper.
Last year alone nearly 700 people took part in Active Life Club sessions. The Govanhill based charity offers football, cricket, basketball, badminton and various outdoor activities. Empowering young people through sport is the ethos of the club and a key part of their work comes after participants are engaged in sport.
Active Life Club then offer skills developments training for their young people. This can be in the form of various workshops or they are helped through programmes which give them accredited qualifications and in turn improved further education and employment opportunities. These opportunities are building transferable skills while volunteering and young leaders’ development programme is equipping them with right skills to become active citizen.
Raza is the Chair and founder of Active Life Club, he has been a volunteer throughout those 23 years, work he takes on in addition to his job as a career adviser for Skills Development Scotland. Raza has been recognised as a finalist in the Community Hero category at The Scottish Sports Awards 2022.
After over two decades at the helm of Active Life Club, Raza insists the aims of the club remains the same and the reason he continues to give so much of his time is the results he sees every week.
He said: “Tackling inequality is still one of our main objectives.
“I keep doing it as is I can see the difference and the impact we are making. I see the number of young people who benefit on a weekly basis. There’s never been a dull moment but the results we’ve seen are a huge motivation.
“For me sport is something that can break any boundary. Sport can often break any difference as the main focus is on playing and enjoying sport, you forget other things. Sports unite people, but certain systems can exclude people and these need to be refined.”
The charity has grown incredibly from a humble beginning. In 1999 Raza was studying community development and education at Glasgow University. To give himself something practical to study and write about for his degree, he came up with the idea of creating Active Life Club to extend sporting opportunities to people from ethnically diverse communities.
From a short term idea the group grew massively with high demand for every session, it was initially run entirely by volunteers but recently they have been able to create paid roles for some of their volunteers.
Raza said: “Through that I was able to identify the need and the gaps, especially for Asian men, to get involved in activities that were going to keep them healthy.
“We started with badminton sessions for men. There was a huge demand so the year after we started offering services to young people. We were running seven sessions a week which were all over subscribed. Doing that entirely voluntary was difficult but it identified a need.
“The community feeling grew from there and it became a kind of hub where young people from across Glasgow would come. We’ve never looked back from there.”
Sport has been crucial in allowing Raza and the other volunteers to engage with participants and help them grow and develop as people.
“We use sport as a medium to engage then offer a variety of other activities to meet the needs of the community.
“Sport has played a massive part in the engagement. What we do is develop our relationship with participants through sport. One of our biggest strengths is knowing the community and developing that trust, it leaves us well placed to help people develop. We see so many young people start as participants and go on to be volunteers, coaches or ambassadors representing us in some form.
“We put young people through programmes which gives them accredited qualifications and can help them go on to university or into employment. We are using sport to develop their understanding and skills in various areas, helping them better themselves.
“All of our staff started as volunteers and some now have a paid role with us, others have gone on to work elsewhere as coaches and a variety of other roles.
"We always aim to try convert that enjoyment of sport into something tangible which can help our young people have a better future.”
The results have been stark, with Active Life Club now benefitting generations of families.
Raza explains: “From the first group that participated, some of their kids are now coming to sessions. They’re saying my dad or my mum told me how good ALC was. We have touched many people.
“One person who used to come along is now a GP, he wants to come back and deliver a message about health. When he was young he was unaware of the benefits of sports and physical activity and he wants to help encourage our young people to exercise.
“There’s other people we’ve had who now work as coaches, in sport science or as physiotherapists. These types of roles were not big for ethnic minorities as they’ve not seen role models in those positions from a similar background to them. I’m very proud that we’ve played a part in opening up those opportunities for them.”
