By Paul Osborne

Over 400 youngsters took part in the London leg of the Get Set to Make a Change project todayOctober 21 - More than 400 youngsters, Olympic and Paralympic athletes and supporters from local communities gathered at 3Mills Studio today to mark the opening of the London leg of the Get Set to Make a Change (GSTMC) roadshow.
Supported by the Big Lottery Fund, GSTMC is a 2012 legacy project of the British Olympic and Paralympic Associations and looks to re-ignite the spirit of the Games by allowing youngsters, known as "Legacy Leaders", to help design, develop and deliver a community project, or "pledge", with the aid of their Olympic and Paralympic heroes.

Rebecca Morgan-Phillips from Burntwood Academy was one of the Legacy leaders who participated in the roadshow in London.

"I learnt more skills about how to motivate people and how to successfully plan something to help more people in the community," she said.

"At my school we are hoping to plan sport taster sessions because we have great facilities like sport halls, swimming pools and new fitness rooms and we want our local community to benefit from them too.

"London 2012 was really inspirational to me, especially the Paralympics because they had so much to overcome and they never stopped trying and that is something I want to take into our project.

"It was especially inspirational to hear from Etienne Stott and Natalie Jones and realise what they want through."

The project is supported by London 2012 Olympic C2 canoe champions Tim Baille andStott and swimmers Natalie Jones, winner of five Paralympic medals, including two gold at Athens 2004 and three bronze, one of them coming at last year's Games.

Paralympic bronze medallist Natalie Jones and Olympic gold medallist Etienne Stott are both ambassadors of the projectParalympic bronze medallist Natalie Jones and Olympic gold medallist Etienne Stott are both ambassadors of the project
The trio will be on hand at all 12 of the roadshows to share their inspirational and motivational stories with the Legacy Leaders.

GSTMC ambassador Stott talked of his excitement to be a part of the project.

"London 2012 generated a huge amount of excitement across the UK and I feel that it is really important that we continute to see that energy leak out into our local communities," he said.

"I am really excited to be involved with The Get Set to Make a Change programme and hopefully I can help inspire the young people to create some fantastic legacy projects that can really make a difference to people within their communities."

The Big Lottery Fund gave a grant of £2.5 ($4/€3) million to the GSTMC project allowing it to run through until the summer of 2015, in which time it plans to host more than 200 projects across the UK designed to boost sports participation and encourage a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

The project began in Canterbury on Thursday (October 18), and will now visit 10 other cities across the UK including Manchester, Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow.

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