PLAYING GREEN: volunteering for greener sports events (PLAYGREEN)

Background PlayGreen comes with one theory: there is a need to enhance sustainability in sports, but sports can also be a platform for people interested in sustainability to be more active. We wanted to test this theory in four countries with environmental volunteers. The selected sport was football which is largely a male-dominated sport and, since environmental volunteers are mainly women, PlayGreen also wanted to make females be more engaged in doing sports through the environmental incentive. Objectives O1: Create volunteering opportunities focused on sport and environment for young people to engage in sport, by testing and promoting a new volunteering format. The idea is that environmental volunteers will engage in playing sports if they are driven to green sports events.O2: Create a European network of organisations enhancing sustainability in grassroots sports through volunteering programs and the sharing of good practices. This ensures that knowledge is distributed to other organisations. Implementation I1: Mentoring was offered to environmental volunteers online through a series of knowledge (webinars) and practice (videos, resources and workshops) , so that they could prepare the green event which was organized in each participating country.I2: During the PlayGreen events, communication was done to gather a network of organisations. A newsletter was created as well as a dedicated Instagram account. Multiplier Events were dedicated to promote the project resources and foster replicability. Achievements R1: 4 webinars and 4 practice videos were produced and watched 775 times, on top of the 212 registrants to the webinars where sports and sustainability specialists talked both to provide knowledge and to be role models and inspire. 9 PlayGreen events also took place in 4 countries using the mentoring tools.R2: More than 200 organisations in the field of sustainability and sports were reached.R3: A total of 14 sustainable sport events were organized and 9 were able to be carried out.