Unified Volleyball Spikes for people with and without intellectual disability to promote social inclusion
▶Summary
Background The project Unified Spikes focused on the development of Unified Volleyball and provided resources to support the development of the sport in the Special Olympics Europe Eurasia among the Special Olympics National Programmes involved in the project . Unified Sports in Special Olympics sees people with and without intellectual disability (ID) train and compete on the same teams and on the same pitches and courts. The project also helped develop pathways to develop female volleyball teams. Objectives The objectives from the original application were as follows:- increase the number of participants in Unified Volleyball in each Special Olympics (SO) National Programmes by 5% per year by the end of 2024. - promote social inclusion through Unified volleyball;- develop a pool of trained and certified coaches;- increase the participation of female athletes in Unified Volleyball in each National Programme involved in the project- develop coaching resources to support the work of coaches Implementation The implementation of the project was done through the below activations:1.Intellectual Output (IO)1 - Creation of “How to create a Unified Volleyball team” guideline2.IO 2 – Creation of “Unified volleyball Training Sessions" guideline3.IO 3 – Creation of “Unified volleyball Mix Gender Division" guideline4.Multiplier Events 1 - Unified volleyball Coaching Seminars in each partner country 5.Multiplier Events 2 - Unified volleyball Onsite Evaluation Coaching Seminar in each country Achievements 1. Creation of the 3 intellectual outputs mentioned above. 2. 498 participants participated in the project consisting of athletes, coaches, Unified partners and volunteers.3. 12 amount of multiplier events in each of the Special Olympics National Programmes participating in the project. 4. 80 coaches trained5. 30 Unified Volleyball teams created during the project including mixed gender teams 7. Overall growth of 439% in Unified Partners and athletes participating