A free after school club for all children aged five and above at Baypoint Club is introducing youngsters to a wide variety of sport and arts and crafts.
The club was taken over last year and converted to a not for profit community interest company by Margate duo Leon Friend and Scott Holden.
The friends, who both have a history of involvement in grassroots sport, say the aim of the free after school activities is to give youngsters a taster of sports and encourage them to get involved.
The club also has a Creation Station franchise with sessions for every age group from babies through to senior citizens.
Dad-of-two Leon said: “The idea of everything we are doing is focused on health and wellbeing.
“We have our kids holiday clubs and after school clubs and these are all free. Last Summer we had more than 100 kids a day over four weeks for our HAF (Health and Food) clubs. That ran again at Christmas and our next one will be at Easter.
“Our after school clubs are a 30 week programme which run in 10 week blocks on a Tuesday evening and these are free for any kid to attend. They can get involved in any sport, football, basketball, pickle ball, badminton, and the idea is that they may want find something where they want to join a club.
“Some kids might not be engaged with sports so there is also the Creation Station arts and crafts. That is for kids and adults and we also run a programme at care homes for older adults.”
The club has also just launched a wellbeing through sports programme delivering sessions in schools across Thanet and Dover.
Baypoint has a number of clubs for adults too and are keen for women to get involved with football and basketball.
Leon and Scott took the club on despite the challenges thrown up by the pandemic and are now seeing good results.
Leon said: “The club came up for lease and we thought we would give it a go. We’d been planning it for around 18 months and were supposed to complete in February 2020 but then covid happened so we had to rearrange the deal and completed in the April.
“In July we were able to run outside sport and outside food and bar and then open up but were closed down again from November until the end of January.
“But it has picked up massively now. When we took it on there were about 180 member and we now have 777.”
An expansion of facilities at the club also includes education programmes, weddings and events, a carvery restaurant and gym, spa and sauna.
To find out more about the after school activities, which run on Tuesdays from 4pm to 6pm, click here
Contact the club direct for HAF club details