Central-European Network of Sport Clubs to Increase the Popularity of Badminton among Teachers and Students in Schools

The overall purpose of the cooperation between the three sport organisations of Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia was to share knowledge and develop practices with the aim of increasing the popularity of badminton.One of the project’s main achievements was establishing relationship with schools which allowed us to involve teachers in our badminton training programme. This meant that we were able to train teachers about badminton who now have the knowledge and possibility to coach children at schools, either in the form of PE classes or extracurricular activities. This made it possible to introduce badminton to a high number of children who can now pursue it as a free time activity and also have the possibility to play at a higher level at one of the three partner organizations’ sports clubs. We regard the training the teachers programme as one of the springboards for the increased popularity of badminton in the region. The programme not only provided professional badminton skills to the teachers, but also theoretical knowledge about for example motivational factors and psychological aspects of the sport, which is essential knowledge for teachers who deal with sports and young children. The participating teachers now have the know-how to coach badminton at a recreational level, plus some of them were also provided badminton equipment. The feedback we received from the participants is highly positive: they thoroughly enjoyed the training programme and were motivated to start introducing badminton to their students. Based on our follow up measures, badminton proved to be a popular activity among students, who are enthusiastic about the game and therefore the schools are maintaining the possibility of providing badminton practices to the students. The involvement of young children at their local institutions instead of solely focusing on attracting more players at the club level allows the inclusion of children from underprivileged areas and schools with disabled children. The project was able to achieve social inclusion and provided equal opportunities to children in all the three different countries. The project did not only introduce successful initiatives in the gym halls, but also achieved to create an online platform that educates users about badminton in a fun, playful way and is a great site for social interaction between players and coaches. The quizzes and video exercises are a playful way for children to gain knowledge about badminton and sports in general. The badge system developed for the platform turned out to be a highly valuable section, as we have experienced that users are enjoying collecting the different awards and it serves as an important motivational factor for children to keep using the site. Those players who play badminton at a higher level, have also given us positive feedback on the video exercises section which has allowed them to improve their game in an easy and convenient way. The online platform is a highly relevant achievement of the project. It is multilingual, so it has given the possibility of providing knowledge to users from all three countries. Furthermore, we find that it adds EU value, since it could be simply further developed to fit to other countries and is easily sustainable. Besides the training the teachers programme and the development of the online platform, the project achieved to promote voluntary activities in sport and engaged an increased number of volunteers. The increased popularity of badminton was further achieved by open days, badminton trials and media coverage amongst others. The project’s successful achievements would have not been possible without the cooperation of the Hungarian, Slovenian and Croatian partners, since the collaborating organizations shared their best practices based on their similar experiences and due to their common effort was it possible to achieve the expansion of badminton in the three countries.