I Will If You Will (IWIYW), the Bury-based fitness movement that’s getting more women and girls more active, more often, shared the secrets of its success at a showcase event at Bury Town Hall on Thursday 1 October.

Delegates from across the North West were invited to spend the day in Bury to learn how they too can reduce the gender gap in the number of men and the number of women who take part in sport and physical activity.

Delivered by Bury Council with National Lottery funds from Sport England, IWIYW was launched as a pilot in June 2013 and is now well into its second phase.

Pat Jones-Greenhalgh, executive director for communities and wellbeing at Bury Council, said: “We want to share our journey and what we have learned so that organisations in other areas of the country can feel inspired and equipped to get more women and girls active in their local areas.

“Amazing things have happened across Bury since the start of I Will if You Will and thousands of local women are already feeling the benefits of getting active. They’re shaking things up, changing the way they think about physical activity and achieving things they never thought they could.”

Firmly established as a behaviour change marketing campaign with a strong and varied local delivery programme, I Will If You Will was a strong inspiration behind Sport England's practical guide to helping women and girls get active and in helping to shape the national campaign everyone's talking about, This Girl Can.

According to Sport England's Habit for Life report, at least 12 million women say they want to do more sport and physical activity, while six million say they are not currently involved but are interested in taking part.

During the showcase, representatives from IWIYW and Sport England presented key findings and best practice to getting women and girls more active, more often.

Lisa O’Keefe, Director of Insight for Sport England and a former Scottish rugby international, told guests: “When Sport England looked at the reasons why two million fewer women than men are taking part in sport and physical activity, despite so many saying they wanted to be more active, we found that women were facing a number of barriers.

“Campaigns like I Will If You Will and This Girl Can are focused on addressing the key emotional barriers, the biggest being fear of judgement. Even the most confident individual can feel daunted by a new environment or activity and we want to show women everywhere that they can take part.”

During the event, guests took part in interactive workshops and viewed local case study videos to learn about key elements that have led to IWIYW’s success. They learned about the challenges of behaviour change and the importance of engaging with local communities, best ways to deliver activities, how to use insight to drive change, effective marketing communications and the value of stakeholder partnerships.

Councillor Mike Connolly, leader of Bury Council, said: “When we launched I Will if You Will in 2013, we made a firm commitment to the women and girls of Bury that we would help get them engaged in activities in their local area.

“Through I Will If You Will, we’ve been able to rigorously test what needs to be done to make it easier for women and girls to be more active, more often and over the last couple of years we’ve managed to do just that.

“We’ve made great progress in Bury and we’ve proved that the I Will If You Will approach works. So far we’ve had nearly 63,000 individual attendances at nearly 8,000 activity sessions and it’s benefitting not just the women getting involved, but their families and our wider communities.”

For more information about I Will If You Will, visit www.iwillifyouwill.co.uk