Global Goals World Cup Europe

To recap, GGWCup Europe stands for the GlobalGoals World Cup Europe. The event and project was led by Eir Soccer -the founder of the Global Goals World Cup, a new form of 5v5 football amateur world championship for women, which successfully merges citizen and stakeholder engagement in sustainable development with sport.The aim of the GGWCup Europe project had been to address the absence of meaningful & prestigious sports events for amateur women creating a lack of positive images & stories that celebrate active female role models as admirable, “regular shaped” everyday heroines in convectional & social media.In practice the GGWCup Europe was a 1-day, high impact, women’s football tournament & media event in central Copenhagen held on 14th May 2019. But it was more than an event & was run as a one-year project. In fact, the project implementation followed a series of phases as laid out in the planning. There was frequent overlap between the phases but for the sake of clarity they can be summarised largely chronologically as follows: •Project Phase 1 Identifying Ambassador CoachesThis phase mainly included the drafting & distribution of the call for applications for ambassador coaches. In particular, a specific deep work was done to identify and contact relevant channels using the network of the team members. In addition, this phase included the evaluation and selection of the ambassador’s coaches. All in all, 12 ambassadors from 10 different countries across Europe were selected.•Project Phase 2: Ambassador Coaches ClinicsIncluded the validation of a curriculum for Ambassador Coaches drawing on experience from previous programmes and impact games. It also included the delivery of two Coaches Clinics in December: one in December 2018 (8 coaches) and one in March 2019 (4 coaches who could not join the first Clinic). These clinics were meant to equip the selected Ambassador Coaches with the knowledge and tools needed to reach out and train women with fewer opportunities BUT ALSO to create storytelling and attract partners AND to work around the Global Goals. •Project Phase 3: Local mobilisationWhen back home, the trained ambassadors proactively created teams of women with fewer opportunities and got support from various partners. This phase therefore included the establishing of local training group for GGWCup teams as well as the initial search for local allies.•Project Phase 4: Teams and Pre-TournamentDuring a period of 2 to 4 months, teams gathered weekly to practice their football skills and get active but also to exchange and work on a strategy to activate a local action plan towards the achievement of one of the Global Goals. This phase was also used by the Eir team to launch the call for Danish teams to register for the event and to promote the work carried out by the “European” teams. •Project Phase 5: Event productionThis phase was key to ensure the final detailed planning of tournament and its alongside events (talks, European workshop, etc), mobilise and brief volunteers etc. In the run up of the event, dealing with media and engaging more VIPs was also important. Of course the delivery of the Tournament was a key component.•Post Tournament Phase: Dissemination and Evaluation.To ensure the sustainability and the maximum impact of the event, the project did not end after the Tournament. This phase included the creation of various materials which describes the project, tells the stories of some of the participants and gives concrete tools for a more inclusive, diverse and meaningful way to use soccer to engage inactive women with fewer opportunities. It also included a massive Impact and Evaluation measurement and report. Last but not least the promotion of the event at the UNGA was key.The support of the Erasmus+ programme was instrumental in developing and testing this new approach.