Sport, life and living together

The project “Sport, Life and Living Together”, aimed at promoting and developing education to sport and through sport, by the fulfilment of workshops held by experts in the field of sport and health and sociologists. These figures worked together in order to develop transversal skills through sport, enhancing the importance of information about prevention of diseases and promotion of health. Thanks to the active collaboration among the staff of the different partner organisations, even the most excluded people, like the immigrants residing in Giffoni Valle Piana (Italy) and the disabled people of the Greek organisation “Iris Kavalas” had the opportunity to take part to the project activities and to understand how important is to affirm their European citizenship. The project activities, that have involved about 100 young people and several stakeholders, have actually pursued another important objective: to develop competences in matter of “learning to communicate”, “learning to stay together”, particularly for people who have problems to be accepted in society. Thanks to the meetings with the community, that had place at the beginning and at the end of the project, we tried to make public authorities aware of the situation so that they could allow as many people as they could to practice sports, despite their performances and thus favouring social inclusion and peer opportunities in sport for people at risk of social exclusion. During the first meeting, the mayor of Giffoni Valle Piana held a speech in which he underlined the importance of collaboration among different European nations. The first meeting was therefore really important, but the Greek organisation could not take part to it, due to the cancelation of their flights for fog and snow during those days. The meeting was attended by many local authorities and representatives of the local society who actively took part to the conference and spoke about their personal experience abroad. In January, the coordinator, after having consulted with the coordinators of the partners’ countries, drew up the announcement for the selection of the participants and he decided to favour the weakest segments of society. The interviews and the meetings saw the participation of about 80 young people who were selected for the activities. However, due to the possibility given by the partner organisations to welcome new interested young people, a major number of people took part to the activities. Beside the selection of the participants to the activities, a selection of volunteers was carried out and they took part to many activities, including mobility to Bulgaria. The second international meeting was one of the most exciting because of the number of the participants (3 people from staff, 5 volunteers from each partner country). During this meeting, the staff and the volunteers gave a report and arranged the following activities and they also agreed and indicated techniques and useful subjects for the writing of a book that was published in December. They generated a big benefit to the dissemination of the project, which had already been spread through social media. During the meeting in Bulgaria, volunteers carried out sport activities in order to develop relational skills. It was really an unforgettable experience for the volunteers! During the other months, several workshops about the development of methodological, relational and communicative skills have been realised together with seminars held by experts in the field of sport and health. During the last meeting in Kavala (Greece) all the results were collected and the topics regarding the closing of the activities were discussed. It was also evaluated the possibility to make future collaborations among the same partners. The young people who have been involved in the project were really satisfied with it and we could not expect to have a better outcome after the surveys made at the closing of the activities.