Parent / Guardian Participation
The Little Athletics motto is “Family, Fun and Fitness”. Little Athletics is a family sport and is one activity where the whole family can be involved and participate. Everyone is welcome, from siblings, aunties and uncles to grandparents. Like other Little Athletics centres, Algester Little Athletics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation which is run by volunteers, most of whom are parents of current athletes at the Centre.
Unfortunately, there isn’t always enough helpers. Our Centre cannot operate without the assistance of parents and carers filling the many and varied roles needed each week to run our competition. To hold the weekly competition, we need around 60 volunteers to run all of the events. It can be quite difficult to fill all the roles necessary to ensure we can provide a safe and fun weekly competition for our kids.
To encourage assistance, our Centre collects a $40 parent participation levy from each family as part of the fees payable during our sign on day. To obtain a refund of the parent participation levy at the end of the season, each family must have helped out for 75% of the season, which usually calculates to be approximately 15 competition weeks, although helping out at regional relays and regionals can also count. Please ensure that you see our Officials Coordinator each week to add your name to the list of helpers, as we don't want to miss anyone out.
Families are also required to help a minimum of 4 times during the season in order for their children to qualify for a trophy or award at the end of the season. This is in addition to the athlete attendance and participation requirements for trophy day. This has become necessary due to the ever decreasing number of helpers we have each week, which is not sustainable for the continuation of our weekly competitions.
In order to meet these new volunteering requirements (ie. 4 helps), families must help out a minimum of 2 times from the list in Column A below. It is then open to families to chose 2 options from Column B (or alternatively, 3 from Column A and 1 from Column B, or 4 options from Column A if preferred). It is up to families how (and when) they'd like to volunteer, provided that at least 2 are from Column A, and a minimum of 4 are recorded over the course of the season. Volunteers will be recorded by the event chiefs and committee members, and a running sheet will be available online to ensure transparency, and to help families keep tally. To be clear, each individual parent / carer does not have to help 4 times - the workload is spread across the entire family. Therefore, families could meet this criteria in as little as 2 weeks if both parents help out. We would really love it if families could please do their little bit, so we can share the workload as evenly as possible across our membership and to ensure that our children can continue to enjoy little athletics for many, many years to come.
