Supporting personnel during a pandemic

Recognising the significant impact that the global Covid-19 pandemic could have on our beneficiaries, we decided to embody a sporting mentality to be agile and flexible in our support. As an RAF charity with a prehabilitation mission to safeguard the health and wellbeing of serving personnel through sport and physical activities, we knew we needed to up our game to ensure our beneficiaries were supported during these challenging times. As RAF Sport was put on hold and station gyms temporarily closed, we came up with novel lockdown initiatives to try and ensure there would be no adverse effects to the physical and mental health of serving personnel.

Within six weeks of the first lockdown we had teamed up with two of the world’s leading providers of digital fitness platforms, Myzone and Les Mills on Demand, to provide subsidised heart rate monitors and free online fitness classes to those on deployment and at home. The response to both of these initiatives has been overwhelmingly positive with more than 2,500 personnel having received discounted Myzone heart rate monitors and nearly 2,000 personnel benefitting from the Les Mills on Demand platform with more than 100,000 workout classes downloaded.

Both these discounted offers are still available to all serving personnel.

Whilst we have yet to fully evaluate the impact of our charity’s work over the course of the pandemic, we know from the wealth of feedback we have received from our beneficiaries that our lockdown support has been invaluable in supporting both their physical and mental health during these challenging times.