Photo: Paul Eagle (MP), Kate Horan (Paralympian), Catriona McBean (dsport Manager), Mike Tana (Porirua Mayor), and Youth Group members Noah & Charlotte Bootsma, and Liam Melvin.

Who is dsport?

We inspire disabled people to believe in themselves. To aspire to being involved in sport and active recreation. To dream.

We enable disabled people to get into sport and active recreation.  We don’t believe in can’t. Rather how can we. How can we make this fun and make this work?  We persevere and we build strength collectively.

But more importantly, our members achieve. They overcome adversity, find work-arounds and creative solutions to achieve.  And for some, they will achieve their dreams.

In March we launched dsport at Parliament, hosted by local MP Paul Eagle.  

Inspire

Youth Group
The dsport Youth Group is a unique and cool programme for young disabled people aged 5 to 18 years.  The Group meets twice a month and over the last few years we have been delivering a range of activities for the Youth Group including athletics, cycling, ice skating, rock climbing, circus, and fishing, just to name a few.  We have also participated in some cool events - Round the Bay, Weet-bix Try and the Halberg Games.

Enable

Johan - wheelchair rugby player
Johan is a student and works for the Department of Conservation in Biodiversity Monitoring.

Johan joined dsport in 2019 with the desire to learn and play wheelchair rugby.  As a tetraplegic, Johan's sport grading of 0.5 means he plays as a defensive player trying to stop the opposition from scoring tries.  While new to the sport, Johan is taking is role in the team seriously.

In his first year in the sport, Johan has been lucky to be part of the best dsport team ever.  Not only did the team get new uniforms (thanks to NZCT) but we also finished the WRC season with more wins, more tries and far closer games than ever before.

Catriona McBean received the award from Wellington City Mayor Justin Lester.

Achieve

dsport, winner of the Wellington City Council Accessible Initiative Award 2019

This award celebrates an initiative which improves the accessibility of places, services or information in Wellington.  For us, this meant our activations, advocacy and faciliation done by dsport to enable our members to participate in their chosen sport or active recreation.

Infinity Foundation
Lottery Grants Board
NZCT
Paralympics NZ
Pelorus Trust
Pub Charity
Sport NZ
Sport Wellington

COGS
Four Winds
Hugo Charitable Trust
NZ Racing Board
NZALS
Ocular
Wellington Community Trust
Wellington City Council