- Partners to collaborate on new initiatives fostering gender
equity for soccer benefiting thousands of women and girls
TORONTO, Dec. 5, 2022
/CNW/ - BMO, Canada's Bank of
Soccer, has joined Ontario Soccer as its newest Premier Partner.
This newly formed partnership will focus on enhancing gender equity
within soccer and jointly embrace the goal of helping to create
systemic change to empower self-identified girls and women at all
levels of the sport.
"As the Bank of Soccer, BMO has invested in programming at all
levels for decades and is committed to growing the game and making
progress towards gender equity in soccer and beyond," said
Catherine Roche, Chief Marketing
Officer, BMO Financial Group. "Our Purpose, to Boldly Grow the
Good, in business and life includes our commitment to an
inclusive society and drives us to partner with leading
organizations like Ontario Soccer to expand on programs that tackle
barriers to inclusion."
With this partnership, BMO will support more than 100,000 girls
in Ontario and be Lead Partner of
Ontario Soccer's gender equity and empowerment initiatives,
including:
- The new Grow the Game, Grow the Good Women's Jr.
Leadership Program
- Over 150 coaches and sport leaders with access to
an important "Keeping Girls in Sport" online training
module designed to enable leaders working with girls to create a
safer, more positive and inclusive environment for all.
- As well as in-person training, coaching development, leadership
festivals and learning opportunities.
All programs will welcome interested self-identified girls and
women as active participants and blaze a trail of new leadership
development opportunities, while making gender equity a cornerstone
of the soccer community, where Everyone is
Welcome.
Closely aligning with both BMO's Purpose and Ontario Soccer's
vision of making the game of soccer both equitable and accessible
to all, the program will support underrepresented groups of
self-identified women and girls from BIPOC, Indigenous and lower
socioeconomic backgrounds, in an effort to level the playing
field.
"We are elated to welcome BMO to our Ontario Soccer partner
family," stated Johnny Misley,
Ontario Soccer's Chief Executive Officer. "We both share the
unwavering belief that sport has the power to unite families,
communities, and the nation as a whole and we are deeply grateful
to BMO for its commitment to help Ontario Soccer members grow
the game with diversity, inclusivity and equity as priorities."
"Ontario Soccer, as the engine room of soccer in Canada, represents over 40 per cent of
grassroots soccer players across our great country. Our soccer
community is also proud of the fact that over 60 per cent of our
Women's National Team and over 70 per cent of our Men's National
Team are "Made in Ontario".
Through this diverse soccer ecosystem of over 1 million Ontarians,
almost half of which are self-identified girls and women, we are
uniquely positioned to help our partner BMO to bring their
Purpose to life." Misley added.
Ontario Soccer is the largest Provincial Soccer Governing Body
in the country with its over 550 Clubs and 18 District member
organizations. BMO has a proud history of supporting soccer at the
grassroots community level and was the first major bank to invest
in soccer sponsorship in Canada at
all levels, committing over $25
million to growing the game since 2005.
For more information on these initiatives please visit Ontario
Soccer at www.ontariosoccer.net.
About Ontario Soccer
Founded in 1901, Ontario Soccer is comprised of more than 550
Clubs servicing over 24,000 teams with 380,000 registered players,
70,000 coaches and managers, and 9,500 match officials, as well as
countless volunteers, parents and supporters comprising a direct,
multi-cultural community of over 1,000,000 Ontarians.
Ontario Soccer develops and delivers exceptional and sustainable
programs and services throughout Ontario with the mission of providing
leadership and support for the advancement of soccer in
collaboration and cooperation with our membership, partners and
other stakeholders. Ontario Soccer also operates the Ontario Player
Development League (OPDL) - the province's premier standards based
youth development program and proudly supports Canada Soccer's
National Teams, the Canadian Premier League and Toronto FC.
An overall goal of Ontario Soccer is to assist with the
equitable development of soccer as a healthy lifestyle choice,
provide a talented pathway for players to excel and encourage
inclusive community involvement at all levels.
About BMO Financial
Group
Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly
diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by
assets, in North America. With total assets of $971
billion as of July 31, 2021, and a team of diverse and
highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal
and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking
products and services to more than 12 million customers and
conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and
Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital
Markets.
SOURCE Ontario Soccer