With Christmas just around the corner, we’d like to wish all our visitors, members, partners and stakeholders a fantastic festive season, and hope that you have a prosperous new year.

Over on our website this month we’ve been looking back at 2009 in our 24 Days of Christmas series of news, highlighting some of the work that we’ve been involved in over the course of the year, so here’s the whole list for some festive reading!

And looking towards 2010, our latest issue of ActiveInsight magazine is focussed on the Future and looking towards the years ahead. It has articles about the workforce development within English Lacrosse and Milton Keynes Play Association, how Sector Skills Councils are fulfilling the vision of the Leitch Review of Skills and how we’re helping to deliver the London 2012 legacy. Read all this and much more in our online ActiveInsight magazine.

Jeff Spencer with Personal Best delivery partners in the East Midlands

So here we have a bunch of people holding random pieces of Olympic sports equipment I retrieved from my attic for the photo shoot – none of which have seen Olympic action but hey, we can all dream! Your first thought is probably, so what? What does that have to do with London 2012?

Well, those pictured are actually involved with steering the Personal Best project in the East Midlands which recently launched – a programme designed to harness the unique motivating force of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (you can get all the details on Personal Best here). We are all committed to inspiring more than 300 out of work or socially disadvantaged people in the East Midlands to undertake a level 1 qualification, experience some volunteering and ultimately move into employment or further training. The project really excites me because of the positive impact it will have on individual’s lives, employment, and the sport sector pre 2012 and beyond.

In six months time, I hope to post a different picture with an even better story; a group of Personal Best graduates from the East Midlands who have all got their level 1 qualification and are going on to bigger and better challenges. They are welcome to borrow the sports equipment again for the photo shoot, unless I need it!

After recently blogging about our role in London 2012 and the Personal Best programme,  it was announced today that we’ve been awarded the Inspire Mark for Personal Best.

The London 2012 Inspire Programme recognises innovative projects that are inspired by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Inspire Mark is awarded to projects that help inspire change – a key vision of the London 2012 Olympics.

The Personal Best programme uses the prospect of becoming a Games time volunteer in 2012 as the inspiration to attract unemployed and socially excluded people to complete a level 1 qualification, experience volunteering and move towards getting a job or onto further training.

More information about the programme can be found on our Personal Best pages.

In 1000 days on the London 2012 website

London 2012 have been celebrating the fact that there is now just 1000 days to go until the start of the 2012 Olympics. They’ve been asking on twitter and their website what people want to achieve in the next 1000 days.

For us, we’ve got a number of roles to play in staging the Olympics, and we’re involved in quite a few projects which have London 2012 as the catalyst.

The Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence is one, developed to help athletes succeed at the highest level. Originally developed with the intention of seeing athletes succeed at London 2012, we were obviously delighted to see nine AASE athletes compete in the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics , including double gold medalist Rebecca Adlington.

While it is great to help athletes in their quest for success over the next 1000 days, we also want the sector as a whole to be a success in line with our vision: More People, Better Skilled, Better Qualified. Some of the other projects we’re involved with will certainly help us in meeting that challenge.

With the news that more than five million people are currently participating in London 2012 Games-related projects, initiatives such as Personal Best certainly help get more people better skilled and better qualified.

Personal Best is the national pre-employment training programme, which uses the prospect of being a volunteer at London 2012 to engage workless and socially excluded people with education and help them gain skills, lift their aspirations and open up new life and career opportunities.

Recruit into Coaching is another project we’re involved in which will provide more people, better skilled and better qualified. We aid Sport England in delivering the Recruit into Coaching programme, which aims to recruit, train and deploy 10,000 new volunteers by 2011, greatly increasing our volunteer coaching workforce and directly increasing the sporting activity in both school and community settings.

Sport England have recently produced the following case study looking at the impact of the programme on participants and how these coaches can then go on to help others through sport.

So what do you want to achieve in 1000 days? Let us know through comments below and let London 2012 know through their website or by using the twitter hashtag #in1000days.

With over 5 million volunteers involved in our sector, and the requirement for 70,000 volunteers in the staging of the London 2012 Olympics, the Personal Best programme has a key role in developing the skills of our voluntary workforce.

Today the Guardian ran a piece, Fresh start to Olympic dreams, focussing on the opportunity for disadvantaged people to gain training and a chance to get involved in the 2012 games. As the Guardian points out, the scheme aims to tackle social exclusion, particularly by attempting to attract people from a black or minority ethnic background, those with a disability, lone parents, women returning to the workplace and individuals with health conditions.

This programme isn’t solely London focussed however, and SkillsActive are heavily involved in helping develop this programme, and its roll-out across the country.

The North East of England was the first region outside London to launch the programme back in March, with Jonathan Edwards CBE, Olympic triple jump gold medallist and world record holder, on hand to support the initiative as you can see below. 

Jonathan Edwards launches Personal Best in the North East

More videos from Personal Best in the North East can be found on the LSC North East Youtube.

The South East of England also offers the programme, and other regions will soon follow. You will be able to keep updated on the development of Personal Best through our website section at www.skillsactive.com/personalbest

If you are looking to get involved with Personal Best,  the best port of call for Londoners should be the Personal Best website while elsewhere you are advised to go through the local JobCentre Plus or by contacting one of the regional LSC leads, who are:

• South East: Suzanne.Aldridge@lsc.gov.uk
• North East: Eleanor.Porter@lsc.gov.uk