Field Hockey for Women

The project implementation foresees that the four participating clubs raise the awareness and promote field hockey for women in five different schools in each of the participating partners countries. The project implementation commenced with an online kick-off meeting where the partners were given a clear road map on what was expected by the EU Commission and the project coordinator. Each club visited a minimum of four schools where they were able to involve the students and teach them how to play field hockey. The implementation in the schools happened in different periods of the year and all four clubs successively implemented the project. Infact the partners were called back to the schools by the school coaches to do more lessons. Four transnational trips were organised where the visiting partners were able to see and learn how the hosting partner was implementing the project and able to exchange and discuss ideas about the project also with the headmasters/mistresses and coaches of the schools. The first transnational trip was held by Lazio Hockey in Rome. The partners witnessed how Italy was working with the children in the schools regarding field hockey and then Lazio held a dissemination event in the evening where the schools were invited for the presentation of the promotional video of the FHfW project. Lazio also invited an important member of the European Hockey Federation, Sabina Zampetti, who gave a speech and acknowledged how important it is to promote field hockey in Europe especially for the female sector. The second transnational trip was held in Zagreb where HASK Mladost hosted a special event involving an important professor Maja Horvatin from the University of Kinesiology in Zagreb to speak about the benefits of playing sport and field hockey, especially for women. The third transnational trip took place in Aalborg. This was a very interesting part of the project as before the project, Aalborg only played "Floorball", thanks to the project and a coach from New Zealand who is very familiar with field hockey, the partner Aalborg was in a position to both promote field hockey and purchase hockey sticks, balls and other equipment for the schools so that they were able to play. The children of course did not know the sport and we were fortunate to have spoken to the coaches who informed us how some of the children who didn't play sport in the past really enjoyed playing field hockey rather than sitting the physical education lesson out. This was an incredibly positive experience and we really felt that through our project we were bringing something positive to the schools that we were involving. The last and final trip had to be at Feyenoord in Rotterdam which is renowned for field hockey expertise. We made this trip a bigger trip in that only 1 representative from each partner country went to Aalborg and 3 representatives from each partner were present in Rotterdam. This was also a spectacular trip in which Feyenoord not only shared with us a half day at the school where they implement the project but also showed us the rest of their club and how it works. In the evening, they held a stunning dissemination event. We invited the President of the European Hockey Federation, Marijke Fleuren, to the event where she gave us the most inspirational and positive speech. A new video was shown which summarised the best parts of the project and will be published on the website of the European Hockey Federation. An award was also given to the one of the representatives of the partner clubs, Niels Heijlson, for "Best Sport". This(and the videos) were not part of the project but we felt that it was a nice gesture and could positive to the outcomes of the project. The communication with the partners throughout the entire was absolutely perfect, we all worked well together and the quality control was made so much easier as everyone was extremely efficient in sending in their reporting and articles so that we could publish them.