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Youth Fund facilitates free dance lessons for girls | June 27, 2025

Youth Fund facilitates free dance lessons for girls

The Let's Dance Youth Fund is getting a follow-up. After a successful launch with 679 participants in 2024, the project will return to ten cities this summer. Girls (and boys) can participate in free dance lessons in squares in their neighborhoods. The goal of the organizer, the Youth Fund for Sport & Culture, is to get more girls to participate in cultural lessons on a regular basis. Overvecht, Utrecht, is one of the participating neighborhoods.

The "Jeugdfonds Let's Dance" project will facilitate free dance trial lessons in ten disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands by 2025. With this initiative, the Youth Fund for Sport & Culture aims to encourage girls, in particular, to join a sports or cultural club. "We want to give all children and young people a chance to participate in sports and culture, but also ensure that girls don't fall behind. It's incredibly important to promote equal opportunities—at every level—from an early age!" says Petra Bosman, director of the Youth Fund for Sport & Culture.

Girls Between 13 and 18 Participate in Sports Less Often Than Boys Girls between the ages of 13 and 18 participate in sports and cultural activities less often than boys. While over 820,000 boys are members of a sports club, only 620,000 girls do. They're too busy with school, don't know which sport to choose, or there's no suitable program.* When there are also financial worries at home, the barrier to participation is even higher. "It's a shame," says Daisy Peters, dance teacher at PM Dance. "Dancing with peers is so much fun. It also keeps you fit, teaches you how to function in a group, and often leads to lifelong friendships!" Daisy was involved with the Let's Dance Youth Fund last year. For six weeks, she taught classes in Kanaleneiland and saw firsthand the impact it had on girls. She's participating again this year as a teacher.

Doubling the number of locations. Due to the success of the 2024 program, the Let's Dance Youth Fund will now be rolled out to ten neighborhoods instead of five, including Overvecht, in the municipality of Utrecht. This year, the program will primarily involve female dance teachers, as the pilot program revealed that male teachers pose a barrier to participation. To ensure that girls enroll in the dance school after participating, further attention will be paid to how this works and emphasized that the Youth Fund can pay for it. Bosman: "Participation in sports and culture is fundamental to the development of children and young people. Therefore, we hope to reach more children again this year."

*This is how the Netherlands does sports / Key trends and developments in sports participation 2023 What needs to happen to get girls back into sports? | Trouw