The project Soft Skills Through Sport For Active Youth, started in 2019, is coming to an end. The project has involved 4 countries to work on a very important objective: promoting education in and through sport focusing on soft skills development in youth, aged 15-20 years old.

Looking forward to the project results and its next steps, lets talk with the project coordinator: Adrian Calugaru.

Hello Adrian and thank you for taking part to this interview. Let’s start from the beginning: how did the project idea came out and what did you intend to achieve through it? Why is the topic so relevant?

The topic of the project resulted during a brainstorming session of our members and after the discussion we had with potential partners, including OPES We consider that sport is an extremely useful method that can help developing educational projects, like this one. Romanian Humanist Association is not a sport association, but is willing to develop alternative methods for educational projects, that can help personal development among youth.

The project started and then the covid-19 broke out, how this affected the implementation of the project and how did you manage to overcome the challenges?

The Covid-19 outbreak challenged the whole consortium to reinvent and adapt to a new reality, one that we never lived until now, none of us. So we had to learn from each other, to switch from meetings and live events to online ones. Of course, some of the activities were delayed, the schedule was remade, but the length of the project – 2 years – made it possible for us to be on time with the research and activities we had to develop during our partnership.

What are the main results you and your partners achieved and on which you can build on in the future?

During our project, each partner enhanced its network with educational institutions, facilitating the dialogue between teenager and sport experts in classes. In addition, during our project, we conducted a large-scale study, with around 1000 answers in 2 different stages that measured the benefits of doing sport in developing the soft skills of young persons. This study is trying to build on the need of alternative development among youth, outside the formal educational system, taking in consideration that many employers are looking for potential workers with a high level of soft skills. The study was conducted in 2 stages and the reports with the findings will available soon on our website, after we finish processing the data, so they can be used openly by anyone willing to develop this topic in other projects related to this topic.

Now that the project has almost finished, what’s next? have you already planned if and how to proceed?

Anytime a project ends, first we evaluate its success and reaching of objectives. Following the feedback from the partners in the consortium or at local level, we decide how we can use the results acquired in future activities – at local level for each one of the partners, or at international level, applying maybe a new project proposal on a similar topic. Of course, keeping the project website alive is one of our objectives and we’re confident that the long-term feedback which we’ll receive will contribute at developing of future nice initiatives.

Thank you Adrian and see you very soon.