Project duration: 1.3.2020. – 30.11.2021.
Project reference: 2019-3-DE04-KA205-018829
Grant amount: 172.206,00 €
Donor: JUGEND für Europa, Erasmus+ German NA
Summary:
In 2019 sport is an area of life in which people with disabilities arguably have less favourable experiences than their non-disabled peers and competitors. Typical barriers for people with disabilities to participate in sport include lack of awareness on the part of people without disabilities as to how to involve them in teams adequately; lack of opportunities and programmes for training and competition; too few accessible facilities due to physical barriers; and limited information on and access to resources. The unique ability of sports to transcend linguistic, cultural and social barriers makes it an excellent platform for strategies of inclusion and adaptation. Through youth sport work and sports, persons without disabilities interact with persons with disabilities in a positive context forcing them to reshape assumptions about what persons with disabilities can and cannot do. However, NFE educators and youth workers/leaders working with this target group often have little or no experience in using sport as an educational tool. Many do not know how to maximise the potential of sport as a method within their regular youth work, despite of the fact that sport activities can be considered one of the most valuable NFE experiences for children and youngsters. On the other hand, the sport trainers often are even less ready and prepared to work with special needs youngsters and they often don’t have skills or time or resources to promote inclusion of people with disabilities. Our project is trying to put the above-mentioned needs and EU Guidelines/policies into action by developing new curricula and methods for empowering both youth (work) organisations, as well as the sport organisations – to increase their capacity building and human resources for quality envisioning and promoting the physical activity events (youth sport work and sport events) that thus contribute to increasing participation in quality sports by more youngsters, and especially by children and youngsters with disabilities.
Objectives:
– Bring positive and long-lasting effects on participating and indirectly on non-participating (youth and sport) organisations and youth/sport workers by enhancing knowledge management with new innovative youth work and sport resources and training models/curricula in order to provide quality youth sport work programmes for inclusion of youngsters with different abilities in our communities.
– Support youth workers and sport trainers in acquiring and developing key competences as youth trainers (of other youth/sport workers) in the field of using sport methodology in youth work and sports for inclusion of different abilities’ youngsters.
– Engage into intensive dissemination and exploitation activities of existing and newly produced products and attract more different abilities’ youngsters to our youth/sport work activities, and thus increase inclusion among youngsters. We expect minimum of 506 participants of the project: 12 staff/project managers & assistants; 10-16 teachers/trainers/researchers & youth workers all working on the intellectual outputs; 220 participants of the multiplier events; 24 trainers
– participants of the LTTA and over 40 multipliers (10 per country) that will be using our intellectual outputs in their work and testing their effectiveness locally both personal and on organisational level with more than 200 youngsters, out of which 80 will be of fewer opportunities.
Project activities:
A1 – Project Management
M1 – Kick-off meeting
O1 – Guidebook “Using NFE and sport methodology for inclusion of youngsters with disabilities”
M2 – 2nd meeting
O2 – Curriculum “Training youth workers and professional sport trainers in using sport methodology for inclusion and interaction of different abilities’ youngsters”
C1 – LTTA Training of trainers
M3 – 3rd meeting
O3 – Toolkit “Sport methods/games – adapted for using in youth / sport work for inclusion and interaction of different abilities’ youngsters”
M4 – 4th meeting E1, E2, E3 – National conferences in IT, HR, RS E4 – International conference, DE M5 – Evaluation meeting Partners will develop and use the innovative intellectual outputs, promote innovative methods and pedagogies, develop learning materials and tools in sport and youth work for inclusion of youngsters with disabilities.
We expect the positive and long-lasting effects on partner organisations who will increase their capacity and competences for providing quality adapted sport activities for inclusion based on innovative approach with using intellectual outputs of in their work with beneficiaries. Marginalised youth in communities will benefit from the enlarged support tools and mechanisms in their communities from sport trainers and youth workers. On local and national level, we expect increase of all (mainstream and marginalised) youngsters’ competences for inclusion.