Four people who work to make sport more inclusive have been shortlisted for an award. The group includes a rower, a boxer, a dancer and an athlete. They are changing how sport is perceived and who takes part, inspiring disabled children, adults with visual impairments, Invictus athletes, and people living with Parkinson's or cancer.
Sophie Conbeer, Maryam Pourian, Gemma Rous and Gavin Lane are finalists in this year's BBC Radio Devon Make A Difference Active Award.
Adaptive equipment is being used to welcome new participants into rowing and running, but those involved say the biggest change is coming through a more inclusive attitude to sport.
"There isn't anything you can't do and we're definitely able to prove that. Well, I'm able to prove that," said Conbeer, the captain of the Mayflower Offshore Rowing Club in Plymouth. She is also an amputee who took up rowing six weeks before her surgery and continued afterwards thanks to a rowing prosthesis. With funding from the charity Love Rowing, the club now has adaptive seating, which enables anyone to get involved.
She said: "I feel it's important we can accommodate everybody and be diverse and adaptive, and ultimately inclusive." She has supported British Blind Sport, members of the military through the Invictus Games and spent two years with the Para Development squad for British Rowing.
Pourian is a dance teacher with Dance for Life and one of her classes, Move to Nurture, is specifically designed for people living with cancer. She said: "We could see the positive benefit of movement, as could they, their doctors and oncologists." The focus of the sessions is on the moving and the artistry and creativity that dancing can bring, with adaptions made to allow participants to be seated throughout if needed. She said she could notice changes in the dancers: they can reach further, bend better and they have more stamina and energy. "They become themselves again," Pourian said.
Rous, a paediatric physiotherapist, founded Penguin Sports Foundation in north Devon after noticing children she was working with did not have the sports activities and opportunities they needed or wanted. Her charity now offers rebound therapy (trampolining), hydrotherapy and frame running. "All of the children we work with have some kind of movement disorder, or difficulty accessing their movement," Rous said.
Devon Sports Leaders Shortlisted For Inclusion Award