Background
The project idea comes from some assumptions:
- The role of volunteerism to enhance economic and social inclusion of volunteers;
- The role of sport as an instrument to transmit crucial values while enhancing mental and physical wellbeing. The two assumptions are deeply connected each other. Benefits of volunteerism in sport activities have, indeed, been widely recognized at all levels.
Furthermore, nowadays, many sport activities highly depend on volunteers who are often more than the paid staff and whose presence is in certain cases the only guaranty for doing sport. This is particularly true in disadvantaged neighborhood and small villages where social and economic conditions make sport not a top priority for people living in the area ad do not have access to sport events and sport activities.
To sum up, volunteerism in sport activities is highly relevant for several reasons.
- Volunteering enhances the personal and professional skills of the volunteers;
- Volunteers become a point of reference for young people and are a vehicle to transmit values;
- Volunteers become an added value for the sport clubs at all levels to increase number and quality of sport events and sport activities to become instruments to provide more accessibility and wellbeing.
Aim of the project
The main aim of the project is to enhance volunteerism in sport field as an added value for the promotion and increase of sport activities and event in Europe with the focus on accessibility of the event.
In this respect, the project identifies the following objectives:
- to collect and exchange good practices in volunteering management and recognition;
- to identify and test an educational programme to train volunteers able to organize sport activities in disadvantageous neighborhood and small villages;
- to enhance the possibility to access to the sport field for young people living in disadvantaged neighborhood and small villages as a way to promote social inclusion;
- to spread awareness about volunteering in sports as a means to promote social inclusion, active participation and citizenship and well-being.
General plan of the project
To contribute to this aim, the project proposes to collect best practices as the base to create an educational programme to train volunteers both to enhance their competencies and to understand the role of volunteering in sport. Being trained, sport clubs coordinators will implement the training test for volunteers at local level in their communities, based on the competencies acquired. Following the implementation of local activities, feedbacks will be collected and will serve to finalize a toolkit which will become a MOOC for associations, organizations and clubs.
During a final conference, the project results will be shared with several stakeholders.
The main steps of the project implementation will be:
- Kick off meeting to get to know the partners, divide roles concretely, plan and fix internal deadline;
- Identification and sharing of good practices: inventory phase to research and analyse the existing toolkit/good practices regarding the recruitment, train and coordination of volunteers in sport field and their recognition (rewarding system and valuing of competences);
- Create the training format and test the training at local level;
- Realize an international meeting for multipliers, inviting sport clubs at local/regional/national level interested in volunteering in sports to be trained in how to recruit, train, coordinate and recognize volunteers in order to organize accessible sport events – step one;
- National events/programme: everyone in his/her country will experiment the programmes for volunteers as a pilot;
- International meeting to collect feedback and evaluate the pilot activity to produce the final educational programme;
- Creation of MOOC and launch;
- Final conference.
Methodology
The methodology used to implement the educational aspect of the project will be blended: Non Formal Education (NFE) methodology will integrate the methodology normally used at local level in educating young people and professionals in sport field in order to be more effective and create the room for a more deep change in the local community.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
