What

COME In is an European project supported by the Erasmus+ Sport Programme. The project is led by OPES, Organizzazione per l’Educazione allo Sport, which promotes and organize various activities in the field of sport and having social inclusion purposes. OPES implements the project together with its partners: ENGSO Youth, ANESTAPS, SPARC and Special Olympics.

The project wants to support coaches, educators, volunteers, youth workers and leaders in sport field to create more inclusive sport opportunities with the aim to increase participation of young people with disabilities in sports.

Objectives

The main objectives of the project are:

• Increase participation of young people with disability in sports at grassroots level;
• Build the capacity of the sport clubs in offering adapted and inclusive sport sessions for young people with disability and without disability;
• Design, test and implement a training format for sport trainers, mentors and coaches using existing toolkit to help the organisations to increase the number of young people with disability to be included at grassroots level.

Why

Although the beneficial of doing sport is widely recognized, participation of disabled youth in sports in all European countries falls behind the sport participation of able-bodied children. This situation is confirmed by data coming from the countries where the project partners are active. For instance, in the UK 17.2 % of people aged 16 years and over with a long term limiting illness or disability play sport once a week. In Italy, 42% of people (aged 6 to 44 years) with a disability are doing any kind of physical activities or sport, while this is 59% for those without disability.

In France, 70% of people with disability (between 16 and 64 years) would like to do sport. Nevertheless, there is a gap between the will to do physical activity and the actual possibility to practice it.

In this respect, there is a need to increase participation of people with disability as a way to improve physical and mental wellbeing as well as to favor a process of social inclusion which benefits the entire society.

When

COME In is a 24 months project. It started in January 2018 and will officially end in December 2019.

How

Coordination and development activities

The first part of the project will be dedicated to collect good practices and to prepare a programme for sport trainers, mentors and coaches to adapt and create more sport opportunities for young people with disability at grassroots level.

In this phase, the activities foreseen will be: the organization of a kick off meeting, the creation of a Steering Committee, collection of good practices and preparation of a comprehensive document which include the results of the research.

Implementation and dissemination

COME IN will be implemented through the following activities:

• First part of a training course for sport trainers, mentors and coaches involving 24 participants;
• National pilot activities implemented by the participants to the training course in 3 countries (Italy, UK and France) between October 2018 and January 2019;
• Second and final part of a training course for sport trainers, mentors and coaches: feedbacks collected after the local activities will be used to finalize the product and to proceed with the last part of the training phase.

A final conference, organized in France, in October 2019 will allow for presenting the project results, raising awareness in the project’s outcomes.

Expected outcomes

The project COME In aims in particular to develop a toolkit to increase participation of young people with disability in sports. The toolkit will be an accessible educational tool with guidelines to open access to disabled people within sport programme.

During the project, partners will also implement an online campaign that will contribute to actively disseminate information on the project and the outcomes and results.