Free subscriptions and tampons to try to stem the bleeding of registrations to gyms and dance schools. This is the recipe that AICS (Italian Association of Culture and Sport) has decided to put in place to meet its members who have registered a decline in membership of over 3,000 members compared to 2019.
First of all, the real numbers of the alarm launched by AICS: in 2019 the members were 13,500, today, after the first month of activity, they stopped at 10,200. A drop of over 3,000 registrations involving over 400 associations including gyms, yoga, dance, martial arts, swimming and basketball courses. The most worrying figure, however, concerns young people: the drop in enrollments in the 12 to 18 age bracket in fact reaches 60% in some cases. According to AICS, there are two reasons behind this phenomenon: the economic crisis following the health emergency and the lack of green passes by the very young.
“The pandemic has mainly affected young people between the ages of 12 and 18 who have closed in on themselves. With free registrations we hope to bring them closer to sport and community life”, explains Ezio Dema, president of Aics Piemonte. The association has in fact decided to offer six months of free sporting activity to 250 people from Turin. Not only that, however, because it also adds 2 months of free tampons for those over twelve years old.
“The pandemic has hit us hard”, says Ezio Dema, president of Aics Piemonte, “we have lost along the way numerous sports associations that were no longer able to have a sufficient number of members and we have lost members almost everywhere. worrying phenomenon, a sign of a community that is disintegrating. Sport is not just physical activity, it allows people to relate to others. For this reason, because we are convinced that associations must be a social space and a tool for practicing participation , like Aics, together with the affiliated associations, we have decided to welcome those who cannot pay for free, thus helping to spread the culture of giving “.
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