Programme: Erasmus +
Key Action: Sport
Action: Collaborative Partnerships
Action Type: Small Collaborative Partnerships
Lider: Coordinator: Fondazione Laboratorio per le Politiche Sociali - LABOS
Partnerzy: Instytut Rozwoju Sportu i Edukacji (Polska), Fundación Red Deporte y Cooperación (Spain), Dogansehir Dag Ve Doga Sporlari Kulubu Dernegi (Turkey)
Duration: 1.01.2019 – 31.12.2020

The main objective of the project is to improve training of sport coaches with a focus on developing mentoring skills. With this aim the project addresses the topic “Promote education in and through sport with special focus on skills development”.

Educational value of sports in the European Context

The role of sport as a tool to convey positive values is described for example in the 2007 White Paper on Sport (COM/2007/0391 final).

The aim of this project is exactly to promote and spread effective and scientifically founded educational tools, taking into account the great educational and pedagogical potential inscribed in sports, in line with the White Paper on Sports and drawing on the experience gained during the European Year of Education through Sport (2004).

Therefore, in this project sport is fully considered as a powerful educational tool, as well as a training tool for active citizenship for young people, in line with the 2009 European Council Resolution on a framework for European cooperation in the youth field, which defines sport as an “activity supporting teamwork, intercultural learning, fair play and responsibility”.

Improving mentoring skill of sport coaches means promoting sport as an educational tool that would be able to enhance young people's skills to relate to diversity, to include and respect everyone, to develop sane competition and then contribute to the development of a less violent, more inclusive, multicultural society.

Project objectives

To reach this aim, the project will develop a good practice exchange between organizations that work on the field of training of sport coaches.

In particular, here are the skills on which the exchange of best practice will be focused:

• soft skills, like active listening, communication or empathic abilities
• skills on conducting groups and facilitating interactions, acknowledgement of active learning methodologies and ability on integrating these skills
• awareness of own educational aims in training sports, and skills to clearly define and pursue them

Through the Exchange of good practice, the project will create some intellectual outputs. In particular:

1. Research on training of sport coaches in each partner country
   The research concerns the state of art regarding training of sport coaches in the consortium countries. In particular the research focuses on training for these key educational figures regarding some knowledge areas and skills that are transversal to different sport disciplines.
   
   
2. Good practice collection
   This output aims to collect good practices of training for sport coaches, that have already taken place in the consortium countries. 10 good practices for each country will be collected, through a common template, useful to allow the confrontation between the practices, and to be used as a tool to collect good practices in other contexts.
   
   
3. Manual "Enhancing Mentoring Skills Of Sport Coaches"
   The “Enhancing Mentoring Skills Of Sport Coaches” manual, is a natural evolution of the previous two outputs. The creation of this manual aims to provide a series of advices and methodologies to coaches’ trainers, sport organizations that work with young people, to coaches themselves and to other stakeholders in the field of youth sports.

The target groups of the project are:

• The partners’ staff.
• The partners’ organizations.
• Sport coaches from each partner countries, that will participate to the pilot tests of the training course.
• Sports societies interested in broadening their skills and capacities in pursuing education in and through sports.
• Young people that will benefit of the mentoring skills of their coaches.
• Other stakeholders, such as local and European policy makers.

Meeting online, 23.07.2021

Seminar in Płock, 30.10.2021