Empowering the Public Value of Sport through Athletes as Role Models: The MESSI Project

The objective of the ATHLETES 4 SOCIETY project is to empower sports organisations to manage the public value of sport. We empowering sport organisations to develop policies/campaigns/programmes that successfully put athletes to good use towards positive societal impact. Hence, the running title: “Empowering the Public Value of Sport through Athletes as Role Models”. The subaims of the project: a) Evaluating the public value of athletes as role models: Cross-country examination of the attributed public value of athletes as role models by the public, sport federations and athletes themselves. This can inform sport organisations and policy makers of each respective country and raise awareness about the role that stakeholders and athletes in particular can play in promoting sport and generating societal value. b) Managing and creating public value: Develop and pilot-test the innovative ‘Athletes 4 Society’ toolkit and bootcamp for sport organisations on how they can successfully utilise athletes to manage the societal impact of their sport. Detect, evaluate and share inspirational practices of sport organisations across Europe that actively put athletes to good use to increase the positive and diminish the negative impacts of their sport; Develop an innovative toolkit that empowers sport organisations to develop an athlete role model campaign/programme with impact Develop a hands-on bootcamp that complements the toolkit and further builds the capacity amongst sport organisations to develop an athlete role model campaign/programme with impact. (c) Stimulating and empowering public value: Setup, launch and award the ‘European Athletes 4 Society Challenge’. We want to challenge sports organisations and athletes across Europe to develop a successful athlete role model project. This challenge will increase awareness, inspiration and knowledge-sharing amongst European sport organisations and will actively empower the public value of sport.