The main goals of the project are to:

• Develop or strengthen programmes to counter and prevent violence in amateur sport
• Help local authorities improve knowledge on violence and prevention strategies
• Empower local partners by providing them with suitable and adequate tools to answer with an integrated, multi sectoral approach, as they are well aware of the problem but often ill-equipped to address it

The main activities of the project are:

• Establishing a picture of violence and discrimination in sport at the local level in several European countries
• creating practice sheets on valuable actions regarding the experience of the city/region in tackling the issues of violence and discrimination in sport
• creating a local training programme for local authorities, sport organisations and volunteers
• implementing pilot projects in all partners cities
• sharing results of the project during a festival in the context of the European Week of Sport (2020)

The impact of sport goes well beyond stadiums: it is an activity that we consider as embodying our (arguably) universal values of human excellence, tolerance and fair play. But it can also be an arena for the expression of aggressiveness and in some cases violence, racism and other types of discrimination. If European and national authorities have been acting to detect and sanction such behaviours in professional sport for more than two decades, the same cannot be said of amateur sport. Its hyper-local and fragmented nature makes it difficult to implement nationwide or European-wide detection and prevention measures.

• Preserving amateur sport’s cohesive capacity by fighting discriminatory violence at the local level

Violence in sport does not only affect professional sport and large events that receive a lot of media coverage: it is also manifest in amateur sport. In this field, incidents are often linked to provocations inciting hatred and discriminatory violence. These can be caused by players and athletes but also club managers, volunteers and parents. Some sports are more affected than others by incidents of violence, mostly of a discriminatory nature, but in any case, this issue requires appropriate interventions.

• Make Amateur Sport Tolerant by Eliminating Racism and Discrimination – Analysing discriminatory violence in amateur sport – State-of-the-art in 7 European countries

LEfus is leader of the project. The project partners are:

Local authorities: Liège (BE), Lisbonne (PT), Loano (IT), Maranello (IT), Nea Propontida (GR),Valence (FR)
Other organisations: Europaische Sportacademie Land Brandenburg (“The European Sports Academy Brandenburg”, DE), Unione Italiana Sport per Tutti (“Italian Union: Sport for Everyone”, IT), Portuguese Ministry of Internal Administration (PT)