Paris, France, January 2019 – Violence and intolerance (racism, sexism…) are regularly condemned in professional sport, but they also exist in amateur sport and local authorities can, together with their local partners, act to prevent them. Empowering local authorities to do so is the objective of the new European project on sports led by Efus, which started in January for a duration of two years (up until December 2020).
> An integrated, multi-sectoral approach
The project’s main objectives are to develop or strengthen programmes to counter and prevent violence in amateur sport; help local authorities have better knowledge on such violence and on prevention strategies; empower local partners by providing them with suitable and adequate tools to respond with an integrated, multi-sectoral approach, and examine the extent with which gender discrimination motivates violent incidents in amateur sport and whether it has an impact on volunteering.
The project will draw up an overview on violence and discrimination in sport at the local level in several European countries; collect promising local practices; create a local training programme for local authorities, sport organisations and volunteers, and implement pilot projects in all the project partner cities. The results of the project, which gathers six local authorities and three institutions from six European countries, will be presented at a festival to be organised during the 2020 European Week of Sport.
> More than 25 years of experience
Efus has been working for over 25 years on the local prevention of violence in all its forms in sport. In the past few years, it created the first European Prize for Social Integration Through Sport as part of the Sport+ project. A collection of best practices carried out in Europe was published as part of this initiative (European Practices for Social Integration Through Sport, available online here).
The idea of prize was later taken up by the European Union, which created the #BeInclusive EU Sport Award that distinguishes “organisations using the power of sport to increase social inclusion for disadvantaged groups.”
Prior to that, Efus led from 2010 to 2012 the GOAL project on the prevention of violence in sport (the project’s publication is available here).
>>> More information on the MATCH-SPORT project
>>> See the project’s page on the European commission’s website
