Four years of Physical Empowerment

By Philippa, CEO of Physical Empowerment

A bit later than planned……

It was our 4th anniversary on the 10th March 2025; wow! I am glad that I’ve managed to complete this blog before our 5th anniversary in 2026.

Before I start typing away, I wanted to share with you a few of my favourite feedback comments from the last year. It’s this feedback that reminds us why we do what we do, time and time again.

“Doing this Physical Empowerment course will always be a core memory of my life.”

"I guess the clue's in PE's name... I've never felt so seen, heard and empowered my whole adult life. Thank you,xx”

“Your course has given my children back a confident mum. Thank you.”

Where do I start? We were lucky to receive some funding from Social Business Wales to create a promotional video. This was filmed at our HQ in Port Talbot and is available to view on our website.

Leann, one of our fantastic volunteers, took on our social media accounts and works tirelessly at creating great content.

We recruited several new volunteers who have been taking part in our monthly volunteer training sessions and attending community events such as the Wellbeing Fair in Britton Ferry, open days in Carmarthen and summer sessions with Carmarthen Youth Group.

Helen qualified as our first Physical Empowerment coach in November 2024. Since then she has worked hard to set up a Physical Empowerment base in Pembrokeshire and they completed their first course in July 2025. Amazing! Helen is our admin and finance whizz for which we are eternally grateful.

Two new ladies starting their coach training and hopefully will qualify by summer 2026. They have been running some practice sessions and training hard on the mats. Very proud of them both! All three of these women completed a Level 1 500 Rising course in Crawley in January, alongside some of the instructor team from the Crawley gym.

As well as our HQ in Port Talbot and a new location in Pembrokeshire, we also have a new training space at Parc Dewi Sant in Carmarthen (huge thanks to Lucy Cummings and Mark for believing in us and what we do). So in April 2025, for the first time, we ran three courses in three locations. Wow. Sadly, demand is high in all three areas. On the one hand, that is good for Physical Empowerment but a sad sign of how many women are affected by domestic abuse.

We ran several Mother & Daughter days which have proven a great success. “The way the group is run is so inviting and validating. My girls felt so safe in this group.” This is now something we are going to do on a quarterly basis, as it has a huge impact on the interpersonal relationships of attendees.

We were successful applying for a medium grant from the National Lottery to run a joint project with Playful Life CIC called ‘Together Towards Tomorrow’. This focuses on us cross referring women and children between our organisations so families have access to the vital support they need.

We held our first summer open day in Port Talbot in 2024. We had a good number of attendees, including the mayor, and several of our team spoke in front of an audience for the first time.

Pip ran a course of one-to-one sessions with a lady who lived through childhood sexual abuse. It was a powerful learning experience and gave us a strong basis with which to move forward with this work.

Helen and Pip trained a group of West Wales IDVA’s (Independent Domestic Violence Advisors) in March 2025. The feedback was extremely positive and it was a great day. “A massive thank you to Philippa and Helen, I absolutely love the course you have set up for victims and I thought you were both inspirational, thank you.” (Kerry, IDVA)

We ran six monthly sessions with women after domestic abuse in Crawley. These were powerful and effective and gave the Physical Empowerment team the opportunity to work with the Crawley instructors to train them in our methodology.

We ran four weekly sessions at Port Talbot College with their referral unit class. Feedback was positive and we had some really insightful discussions with the young people there.

Sarah, our magic website lady, has been as awesome as ever, as have our directors and everyone else who supports us.

As always, we want to thank our funders: Waterloo Foundation, Postcode Community Trust, National Lottery People & Places, Pobl Trust, UnLtd, Goat Foundation, Woodward Trust, Moondance Foundation, Cash4Clubs, Carmarthenshire County Council and anyone else we’ve unintentionally forgotten. We thank you for your belief in our work and what we do. We also want to thank Waterloo for inviting Philippa to their Christmas lunch in Cardiff; it was a lovely experience.

We will continue to promote preventative work with teenage girls so they don’t end up as women who need our courses in the future.

We will continue to grow our sisterhood and always remember that #strongwomenlifteachotherup

#onwardsandupwards

#dreamscancometrue

With love, Philippa / Pip,xx

Philippa Martin, Physical Empowerment CEO, September 2025

If you'd like to talk to us, join one of our courses or are in need of our help, please contact us!

Contact Us