Handball for Dual Careers

The Handball for Dual Careers (H4DC) project had a duration of 30 months, starting in January 2017 with the kick-off event in Granollers & closing in June 2019 with the International seminar in the same Catalan city, both events organised by the lead organization: Balonmano Granollers (BMG). The project has accomplished the objectives set at the beginning. Its main aim was to develop an innovative club-based pilot programme to support Dual Careers to facilitate an optimal combination of high-quality training & education & transition to the labour market to young players practicing handball. The project has successfully delivered the methodology of the H4DC Pilot Programme, an ambitious product designed by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) after a thorough needs assessment of the 3 implementing clubs. This methodology has been tested by BMG, the Association Fenix Toulouse (FT) and the IK Savehof (IKS) in their home countries and for a period of 17 months (Feb 2017 to June 2019), involving the following target groups: 95 players in Granollers, 18 in Toulouse and 101 in Goteborg. This support included several services related to individual and collective counselling, awareness raising, individual tutoring & mentoring (as regards the educational & professional careers of players), Players 2 Business events linking players and private companies, etc. Regarding the Sport & Education pillar, 4 new agreements have been concluded between the clubs & academic institutions. Concerning the Sport & Labour Market pillar, the P2Bs were welcome by players and companies as a great innovation of the project and involved 72 players and 108 companies. As a result of these actions, 16 new employment contracts were signed. In the same line, the Federation of the European Sporting goods Industry (FESI) delivered a Job Analysis report identifying the most suitable job profiles for sportspeople. On the other hand, and as part of the H4DC implementation, the 3 clubs have organised exchanges of athletes & coaches in the framework of the Learning study tours (involving 62 players), which led to building solid links between the 3 handball clubs and its members and to increase the knowledge from each other.In parallel to the implementation period, AUAS has developed a Monitoring & Evaluation mechanism to collect data from the beneficiaries and thus capture valuable information to draw solid conclusions on which areas of the methodology have proven satisfactory and which of them need further improvements or corrections. By using the Monitoring and Evaluation Scoreboard, and in cooperation with rest of partners, AUAS has delivered the Final Evaluation Report. The H4DC activities have reached the targeted audience & successfully transmitted the key message to participants, who have been overall very satisfied with these sessions. A sound communication & dissemination strategy has been deployed since the very beginning, designed by BMG and involving all partners, with a special mention to the European Handball Federation (EHF) who has played a prominent role in the dissemination of the project results. A central element of the strategy has been the project website (www.h4dc.eu), a platform to disseminate news, press releases, newsletters, interviews & videos. The site has been complemented by the social media strategy trough Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. Off-line activities have also been essential to reach the project target groups. It is worth mentioning the different events such as the International Seminar in Amsterdam, organized on December 20th 2017, with 110 participants from 16 different countries and 15 different sports disciplines, or the Closing Conference in Granollers on June 12th 2019, sharing main project deliverables and findings to a large audience; these events have been crucial for the awareness raising on dual careers, and have been strongly supported by the social media tools.