Summary of 2024 activities ACE PROGRAMME OVERVIEW 2024 During 2024, the ACE Programme achieved several significant milestones amongst various notable achievements: The ACE Programme started the year with 2 coaches and during the year worked with 7 coaches. The ACE Programme started the year with 2 volunteers and during the year worked with 11 volunteers. During the year, the ACE Programme introduced a new school in an area of high deprivation, Flat Bush Primary in Otara, Auckland. During the year Utu Tuima joined as an ACE Programme Assistant coach. Utu is the coach at two tennis clubs nearby: East Tamaki Tennis Club and Mangere Bridge Tennis Club. For some time, the ACE Programme has been seeking to form a relationship with local tennis coaches. With the support of the Head of Bairds Mainfreight Primary School, Otara the ACE Programme hosted 2 lessons at East Tamaki Tennis Club, introducing the children to full sized tennis courts, enabling them to understand the history and operations of the club, and setting up the chance for the children to play tennis in the future at the club. At the beginning of the year our local funding was uncertain. We had made an application to a local charitable trust in late 2023 and been unsuccessful. In the first quarter of 2024 we were successful with a grant application to another charitable trust and were granted $30,000 for the remainder of the year. Funding at this level, locally, was a first for the ACE Programme. During the year, 22 ACE Programmes were held at 3 different schools in high deprivation areas in Auckland only. Because of school timetables and in some cases, the age of the children, we curated each ACE Programme lesson to be 45 minutes. During the year we worked with 658 children over an 8-week period for each ACE Programme: a total of 3,672 child hours. These levels were all firsts for the ACE Programme. Tennis New Zealand very generously provided tickets to children and teachers FROM Bairds Primary School to watch the Davis Cup, New Zealand v Turkiye match at the ASB Stadium on 2 February 2024. In addition, in the Olympic year, the ACE Programme was present at Bairds Primary School representing tennis amongst the Olympic sports. The ACE Programme has received an invitation from Tennis Auckland to appear at the ASB Classic ATP 250 event in Auckland on 6 January 2025. We are going to curate a special ACE Programme lesson. Tennis Auckland have generously donated tickets to the Grandstand Court to teachers, parents & children to watch the tennis afterwards. Our ACE Programme costs for 2024 were $39,539.28 of which 75% were coaching costs and 25% equipment costs. The costs were funded 75% by local charitable trust funding, 21% by ICP UK, and 4% by ICNZ members. The ACE Programme continues to be supported by the Lavie Tennis Academy based in Auckland, who have provided coaches during the year. Up to and including Q1 2025, Lavie generously provided their coaches free of charge; from Q2 2025, Lavie coaches have been paid the going rate; they are a commercial organisation, coaching is their career, and we are very accepting of these terms. We continue to have a ratio of 1:4 or 1:5 adults to children during the ACE Programme. Also, with an eye to the future, several new coaches were introduced and trained for the ACE Programme. Understandably, there is a cost to the training of new coaches and there were times when we had 3 coaches and 3 volunteers operating at the same time. Our measure of impact is the Online Questionnaire completed by the children at the end of each ACE Programme. We continue to receive superb feedback from the children in terms of the enjoyment factor, the tennis tuition and the life skills component. In all cases, the Heads of the schools and the teachers are enamoured with the ACE Programme and the quality of the coaches and volunteers. The ACE Programme remains indebted to the financial support from ICP UK. The seed funding has allowed the ACE Programme to be created and grow and has given the ACE Programme the credibility to seek substantial local funding. ICNZ members funding over the years has been, and continues to be, a valuable source of financial support.
