Sport Sparking Impact Last week, during the European Week of Sports #beactive, the Erasmus National Agency invited us to attend a networking event in Rimini, Italy. Aart Bos met with 25 passionate friends (Kacper Romaniuk, Huseyin Uvet, Róisín Lawlor, Leander Verbeeck, Regina Valenzano and Samer Al-Kasih) active in sports or youth work during the three-day network event, and we discussed the EU strategy in sports and youth work. This is the second meeting organized under “YouSports," a long-term strategic project to connect sport, youth work, and non-formal education for individual competence development and community/societal impact. Our context is Youth. It is a Strategic Project within the European Youth Programmes funded by the Youth sector. We come from youth work and non-formal education to create bridges and connect closer to sport. For NFE, we talk about youth work and projects, from grassroots to regional to national level to international projects, including those funded by European programs. YouSports (https://lnkd.in/eZgaDize) has two main aims. To increase and improve: 1. The use of sport in non-formal education 2. The use of non-formal education in sport Sport is part of our first step in engaging, connecting, and empowering youth toward a sustainable future and leaving no one behind. What we see in reality is that a great percentage of the younger generation is disconnected, lacks trust in decision-makers, and does not feel in daily life that they matter. Research tells that ca 50% of youth 14-18 years has mental issues. We believe that Sport is an engaging “tool” to involve more youth (who doesn’t like sports or have a hero and role model as a poster in his/ her bedroom? ) and tap into their world using fun, games, and learning in a rich variety of learning methods (as in game-based, collaborative, embodied, social and emotional, experimental, and active learning). During the three days, we exchanged best practices and many ideas to co-create in campaigns, concepts, and funding. We agreed on three main streams: 1) Recognition of social sport e.g., raising awareness, visibility, and understanding of sports' potential as a tool for individual and societal change 2) Partnerships eg. Building networks and relationships between those who share a passion for the sport as a tool; linking youth and sports fields close together, building a community of practice; increasing the capacity of organizations; providing links and opportunities for sharing of practice; encouraging Programme connections with federations and sports bodies as multipliers of opportunities; encouraging project building; moving more organizations from being potential applicants to become active beneficiaries of European Youth Programmes... 3) Quality Projects eg. Supporting methods and methodology for value-based learning and competence to use them for different types of learning; #erasmusplus; #BeActive;
#erasmusplus
Associate Professor at Yildiz Technical University
3moThank you to YouSports for an inspiring event at the European Week of Sports in Rimini. It was a perfect training to use sports as a tool for positive youth engagement and change.