Partners of COME In (Creating Opportunities for sport Members at Grassroots level to Enable Inclusion) project coordinated by OPES, met for the first time in presence in Rome. In the capital of Italy, on the 25th and 26th of August, representatives of Sparc Sport, ENGSO Youth, ANESTAPS and Special Olympics worked to identify the next steps of the project to enhance its impact.
Why COME In project?
COME In project aims to increase participation of young people having disabilities in the sports field. To give its contribution, the project creates training opportunities targeting coaches, trainers, volunteers, youth workers in the field of sport to make them able to implement unified and inclusive sports programmes at the grassroots level.
The two days of meeting
Saturday 25th of August, the meeting started with the partners’ presentations. This introductory phase increased the chance to get to know deeper the work developed by each partner organizations. A second part of the first day was dedicated to sharing good practices for the inclusion of disabilities in sport, collected by partners in the previous months within their national contexts. An added value to the project purpose was given by the presence of Special Olympics representatives from the team Abruzzo who presented the activity they are currently developing in the region and who will follow the entire project process.
During the last part of the day, partners’ representatives worked on defining the next steps, a timeline and a clear division of tasks. Divided into two groups, participants brainstormed on the contents of the “Come In toolkit” which will be developed during the project and made available for sport organizations willing to increase the opportunities of implementing inclusive sport activities.
Partners paved the base for the educational programme that will be implemented during the project and defined the main points for the preparation of the training phase that will take place in the UK at the beginning of February. From that date, the following months will see participants in the training course implementing pilot activities respectively in their national contexts, in three countries (Italy, France, UK). Feedbacks from the pilots will be shared by the participants in Rome when, at the end of May, a new meeting will host the finalization of the training phase.
Sunday 26th the focus of the meeting was on the internal and external communication plan. Other than our website, updates about the project can be found on the facebook page @ComeInclusion and following our twitter account @ComeInclusion
Follow next steps
The project Come In will last two years and will officially end in December 2019.
The results of the project will be presented during the final event which will take place in France between October and November 2019.
Stay tuned to follow the next steps of the project and to discover how you can be involved!!!