Sport Ambassadors in Rural Areas

About half of the territory of the EU consists of marginal rural areas. 23% of the population lives in these areas, and another 35% lives in "intermediate", i.e. predominantly rural areas. In these marginal territories, we can find low rates of employability and high percentages of unemployment, including significant high rates of young people that are neither in employment nor in education and training =NEET. Compared to urban areas, most of these areas lack economic growth and have fewer opportunities for learning which have an effect on lower rates of employability, decreased well-being, and a tendency of social problems. Our project addresses these challenges by developing a model for enhancing attractiveness of these areas both for local citizens as well as for visitors via organizing sport events. The methodology on how to plan and build tracks and venues for outdoor sport events and sport races will be developed by consortium members and be spread to smaller sport clubs, and sport representatives of youth associations/municipalities in marginal rural areas. The project will pick up “ambassadors“ for rural sport events and facilitate communication, idea and knowledge share among them. The main activities of the project will be built around the development of a training material in the field and conduct ambassadors to acquire the most important basics for track planning for nature sport races. As an impact we expect to enable rural communities to organize attractive sport events and thus trigger local community building as well as boosting sport engagements and reach higher touristic and economic impact. The consortium is built up by 4 partners from 4 countries (HU, EL, ES, SK), each of them active in the field of organizing sport events and sport races in nature sports (MTB, trail running, nordic walking). They are influential sport actors in their regions and aspire to spread the mission of social and economic growth through sport in rural areas.