Sports as an Equal Playground

Background Education, youth work and sport play an important role in promoting European values, social integration, intercultural understanding and preventing radicalization. Different sport activities can effectively contribute to the integration of newly arrived immigrants and other disadvantaged people. Institution-based sports and other physical activities are particularly valuable at creating a sense of belonging and commitment and can help marginalized young people feel included and accepted. Objectives The objective was to promote sports as a tool for youth work and social inclusion, especially for youth from different cultural backgrounds and with fewer opportunities. The main goals included sharing good practices between the partners and their networks and coming up with new ideas to further develop and implement in their activities. Implementation The project consisted of four transnational meetings in the partner countries: a kick-off meeting, an international training session, a meeting to work on the outputs of the project (an educational manual and two podcast episodes), and a final seminar to share the project experience and launch the dissemination of the outputs. Between the transnational meetings, there were also online meetings and independent work. Achievements The main outputs or results to last also after the implementation phase of the project include an educational manual named after the project, “Sports as an Equal Playground: a collection of good practices and tools to foster social inclusion and equality in and through youth sport activities”, and two podcast episodes to support and raise interest in the manual.