Promoting sport for people recovery from disaster: We Care We Sport!
ONGOING
We Care We Sport is a project financed by the European Union under the Erasmus+ program aimed to promote sport in sport disaster intervention.
After a training period dedicated to develop sport skills of NGOs volunteers and to improve and test the capacities of sport staff to work in post disaster context, we will implement concrete sport actions to help population in Turkey to recover from the in earthquake area; in addition will organize sport events with the double aim of testing capacities acquired during the training and of providing people escaped from war or natural disaster with opportunities to improve their physical and mental health.
The entire process enables us to produce resources for learning how to use sport in post disaster intervention, to involve 140+ (volunteers and sport staff), 200+people attending sport actions and events and to engage 90+ fellow NGOs, Sport Associations, and civic protection organizations to contribute to the project implementation sending participants and to pledge for the uptake and the follow up.
Learning resources, lessons learning analysis and an handbook will be finally shared, disseminated and transferred to fellow organization and interested parties in the Programme Area. Our ambition derives from the urgent need to use all possible means to help population in disaster areas, but also form partners’ conviction that Sport can play a role in the recovery process after an earthquake, and other natural and man made disaster in different ways. Such a belief comes from partners past experience: SPELL (T) that volunteers for inclusive sport for all since its establishment, from USMA – a grassroots sport organization, that already collaborated with NGOs in disaster and poor areas of the world investing in sport for people health and recovery, CERC which works to raise skills of youths and volunteers in diverse contexts and develops research about sport community psychology, and by BONSAI that daily cooperates with volunteering associations, civic society organizations and sport clubs.
YOU ARE -YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH UPCYCLE, ART, RELATIONS AND EQUALITY
ONGOING
YOU ARE is deeply committed to promoting active citizenship and fostering young people’s sense of initiative. With a focus on promoting inclusion, diversity, common European values, civic engagement and participation, the project will mainly address gender equality by nurturing artistic, relational, digital and green skills.
The participants will receive guidance in crafting diverse sculptures, each dedicated to a distinct female figure who has played a pivotal role in culture, society, politics, or science. The objective is to challenge gender stereotypes by employing art as a potent medium of expressive communication.
The sculptures will be fashioned using upcycling techniques, offering a dual purpose of demonstrating the potential of waste for artistic expression while symbolically representing the revival of these women’s stories. This approach emphasises that discarded objects can find new life beyond their original purpose and underscores the concrete stories of these women who have been overlooked in public discourse. Link
EuropEdges (funded by ERASMUS – European Youth Together)
ONGOING
This young generation of EU citizens has been particularly affected by the restrictions and limitations of the Covid-19 pandemic and recently by the fear of conflict inside the EU, therefore strengthening the importance of building a generation of young people who are aware of their role and potential in reshaping European society.
EuropEdges aims at fostering youth engagement and enabling them to play a key role in their community. The project creates an international network of young people where they can meet, discuss and participate in European democratic life cultivating a European dimension of the partner associations.
EuropEdges designs a framework for young people that uses human-centred design principles, a solution-based approach to solving problems based on an iterative process of empathising, redefining, prototyping, and testing ideas using hands-on methods. The project includes blended learning training for young carried out on-site and online to engage with their peers from abroad, therefore learning from and inspiring each other.
The knowledge gained during the training sessions is quickly implemented when participants, connected by mutual interest, work on their proposals for transnational youth initiatives. The best proposals are implemented in the following months with the support of experienced youth workers who monitor and evaluate the learning process. The training curriculum will be a platform to empower young people to speak up for themselves through encounters with youth policy experts and the “Youth voice” conference. They learn how to lobby for youth on local and European levels. The platform for disseminating the project results is a youth e-magazine, “Edges”, written and edited by the participants.
The project envisages boosting the participation of young people in democratic processes at a local and European level and improving the capacity of the youth sector to internationalise their activities, especially in remote areas and including youth with fewer opportunities. Link
KATSURA (funded by Erasmus Sport)
ONGOING
Young adults are the most at risk of sport dropout: once they reach adulthood, they abandon physical activity or sport for various reasons: mainly family and work.
Even before the pandemic, there was a decline in physical and sporting activity in adulthood. Now the issue of inactivity affects not only those who had been sedentary for years, but also adults who stopped practicing sport and physical activity during the lockdown.
Starting from improving the comprehension of young adults’ dropout reasons and of the impact of COVID on adults’ lifestyles, the project delivers an innovative training method, the Katsura System (KS), capable to keep adults active all life spam, at work, at home, in their free time. KS is a holistic method which takes its cue from non-competitive martial arts, and aims at keeping adults self-motivated to adopt a more healthy, sustainable, greener and active lifestyle. It is a system of basic exercises and movements that are normally practiced in the preparatory phase of the most refined traditional Far Eastern martial arts (Aikidō, Tai-chi-chuan, Chi-Kung, Kinorenma, Raja Yoga). KS raises from Budō tradition; and combines physical movement with correct breathing associated with visualization thus to let practitioners to approach themselves and the surrounding environment with kindness, courtesy, courage, loyalty, sincerity and determination.
KS is designed to enjoy multiple benefits of daily simple physical activity, the effectiveness of which is proven by dozens of scientific studies and research: it brings PA into contexts where people live, study or work. Staying active all your life does not only mean continuing to play sports, but adopting healthy lifestyles, integrating physical and mental well-being, carrying out recreational activities and knowing how to integrate adequate physical activity at different times of the day: at home, in the office and over time. Link
OLYMPIC KIDS (funded by Erasmus Sport)
ONGOING
In recent years, European and international organizations have worked intensely to define the role of sport in developing talents as a tool to promote social change and promote its use to achieve social ends. However, many improvements still need to be made. The main purpose of the project is to make people understand the importance of health-promoting physical activity through voluntary activities in sports, social inclusion, equal opportunity and increased participation in sports and equal access to sports. With the ‘Kids Running Towards the Olympics’ project, we want to introduce the Olympics to children at risk of social exclusion with partners from 7 countries (Turkey, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Spain), integrate them into social life and enable them to be physically active in athletics. We want to implement the OlympicKids project as an important educational opportunity, especially for children, in order to create an EU society integrated with Olympic values, with the principles of equality, sustainability, humanity, universality, solidarity, sports, education and fair play.
Targeting children in the 7-14 age group with the aim of adopting a forward-looking vision of sport and an active lifestyle and bringing them together with Olympic values at an early age, OlympicKids will be the first step in transforming and embracing sports into a lifestyle.
- to adopt the concept of sport as a means of bringing social development and the philosophy of Olympism to children at risk
- to promote the exchange of good practices between relevant organizations
- to raise awareness about the benefits of sports practice and physical activity
We have devised some key activities to improve cooperation and planned activities between institutions and organizations involved in the project: international meetings, exchange of good practices, the history and branches of the Olympics, local training and tournaments.