Nea Propontida, Greece, September 2019 – Efus and the partners of the MATCH-SPORT project on the prevention of discriminatory violence in amateur sport took part in the project’s second meeting, on 25-26 September in Nea Propontida, Greece.
Twenty-four participants were in attendance: executives in charge of the municipal prevention policy of the partner cities and professionals in amateur sport representing six countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Portugal).
> The objectives of the meeting were to:
- Present the progress made in the state-of-the art review and the project’s next steps.
- Identify the recommendations the project partners consider important to issue.
- Work on the topics that will be covered in the training programme for the local partners who will contribute to the pilot projects.
● Gain knowledge on local practices with a field visit.
> Field visit
The first afternoon was spent visiting several sports facilities. The delegates notably met a female volleyball team: the young sportswomen shared their experience of discrimination, in particular from parents who hector players from their daughters’ rival teams. The volleyball players said that this kind of attitude has a deeply negative effect.
> State-of-the-art
The state-of-the-art document on which the project partners and the Efus team are working will give an overview on discriminatory violence in amateur sport in the countries covered by the project (the survey could be extended to other countries at a later stage). The point is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of local prevention policies in order to draft recommendations to improve them.
The survey will analyse three aspects: the collection and treatment of data related to incidents; the level of awareness of local stakeholders (public organisations and sports clubs); good prevention practices.
Based on the elements already garnered, the partners said the recommendations should address the issues of under-reporting and consequent lack of precise data on the scope of the phenomenon; parental involvement; the need to work in a transverse manner with all relevant stakeholders as well as to consider all types of discrimination as equally important.
> Training and pilot projects
Martí Navarro, Project Manager, and Carla Napolano, Deputy Director of EU Programmes and Network Life, presented the training programme that was designed together with the project’s experts. It will now be tested as part of the partner cities’ pilot projects and then eventually amended in order to be made available for other European cities. The project’s partner cities will roll out their pilot project following this meeting, where they discussed their ideas in this respect: creating awareness campaigns; developing a diagnostic, or organising an inclusive sports festival. The projects are now being fine-tuned and will be implemented in the months to come up until the autumn of 2020.
> Preparing the campaign for the 2020 “European Week of Sport”
One of MATCH-SPORT’s main deliverables will be a communication campaign to be broadcast during the next “European Week of Sport”, in September 2020. The project’s partners will start working on the campaign’s key messages and target audience at their third coordination meeting to be held in Liège (BE) in February 2020.
More information on MATCH-SPORT