GreenAca - Academy of Environmental Sustainability in Grassroots Sport: Promoting environmental skills in grassroots sport staff

GreenAca is a project coordinated by an International Sports Confederation (CSIT/Austria) with a partnership of 2 experienced national grassroots sport organisations (AICS/Italy, HLA/Croatia), 3 less experienced (TUL/Finland, SportCamp/Greece and UCEC/Spain) and 1 University (SCU/Austria). Sport is one of the greatest enablers to achieve the ambitious agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This is why Sustainability has become part of the CSIT Strategic Master Plan. According to this policy the commitment on the promotion of knowledge and skills of the grassroots sport staff becomes a key-strategy, in order to enable grassroots sport to become a vehicle for the green transition and to promote more equal societies. Moving from this perspective GreenAca has the objective of establishing an Academy through which the staff of grassroots sport organisations can develop knowledge and skills in the field of environmental sustainability to implement sport activities aimed at increasing environmental awareness in children aged 6-13 and their families who live in disadvantaged areas. GreenAca, through 2 international workshops coordinated by the University, combines the guidelines already developed at international level by the most important agencies in the field of sport and environmental sustainability (UNFCCC; OIC; UNEP etc.) with the concrete needs of the grassroots sport organisations and clubs. An educational program, composed of modules and guidelines and delivered during an international training course, impacts on the environmental sustainability knowledge and skills of 30 grassroots sport managers and coaches. At the end, GreenAca will develop the following outputs reaching 10.000 single email contacts and 30.000 monthly views: 5 open multi-sport events engaging 250 children and families to rise environmental awareness, 1 International final conference addressed to 120 sport opinion leaders; 1 website and 1 Moodle module.