CEO and Founder Born Barikor will target a four-fold increase in his Our Parks community within three years telling the Talking Sport & Tech podcast his mission is to get a million Parkers fit by 2025.
Barikor was reflecting on the Our Parks journey to date on the Talking Sport & Tech podcast from Sport Tech Hub from London Sport and his efforts to break down barriers to physical activity and exercise in London.
He told podcast hosts Milly Pelmore and Alex Zurita:
“Sport can unlock potential, but also there are barriers to systems in the way that we approach how we get people into those sports and there are so many different variants of upbringings and access.
“[I want to] give everyone the opportunity, no matter where you live, or how much money you have, access to high quality exercise.”
Barikor’s journey may have begun with humble beginnings but his Our Parks project has grown and developed beyond recognition and last year reached an incredible 250,000 people nationwide.
Most recently, Our Parks have been working with Sport England and London Sport on the Couch to Fitness programme which is a completely free nine-week home exercise series for inactive Londoners.
He added:
“If you let it stand still, what would it do? It will just stay there. If you give it the chance to evolve, it will evolve into so many other things.
“Now we’re more aware of not one product fits all. There are many groups and individuals that could access sport or activity, but they just need a different touch point to make them get access.
“[We have] so many different markets, we do school camps, now we do Couch to Fitness, we’re doing coaching qualification. That all started from one park, me in a park in the rain, trying to get 30-40 people active.”
In the second episode of Talking Sport & Tech, Barikor also discusses his “experience economy” philosophy, the importance of co-creation, and letting your business evolve.
You can listen to Born’s episode on Talking Sport & Tech on Acast, Amazon Music, Apple and Spotify now.
Next week’s episode features Lisa Wainwright, CEO, Sport and Recreation Alliance. Subscribe on your favourite podcast platform to keep up to date each with Talking Sport & Tech.
