SPORT AND GENDER: EMPOWERING GIRLS AND WOMEN

The overall objective of this project is to promote the development of sustainable youth sport network and  exchange of best practices by using gender traditional sport  as a catalyst for transmitting life skills to children and youth in order to reduce violence and other social ills. The children can get off the streets, learn about rules and fair-play and practice conflict resolution without violence.

Highlighted the topics above, the Specific objectives are:

• Increase the opportunities for women to approach the traditional sports

• Develop the heritage of European traditional sports and their declination at female level

•  Favour the best practice to promote traditional games in gender dimension at international level

• Explore the more responsive needs to women's life skills inside traditional sport and their educational followings

• Share topics connected to women, sport, environment, education and cultural heritage.

The ACTION was implemented in 3 main steps, having an impact both at the local and at the European level. Following the partnership building phase and the selection of the theme, the process is planned as follows:

Step 1 –Recruitment of the work group. Fife “Intercultural Youth Sport Groups” (IYSG) was created  in each partner’s location – Rabat, MT; Aksaray, TR;  Arrouquelas , PT; Plovdiv, Bulgaria, PT; Pisticci, IT.  The aim of these panels was to discuss the potentials and difficulties of belonging to a culturally diverse community by using gender traditional sport. After this period, from  June 30^th to July 1^st (travel days June 29^th and July 2^nd) , the first study visit between partners was held in Bulgaria (Sofia). The main objectives were to share best practices, demonstrations and comparisons between partners at international level. (For example Women, gender equality and sport workshop, Inequalities and discrimination: Constraining women in sport workshop, Empowering women and girls through sport- workshop etc. )

Step 2 – Raising awareness campaigns and information. In the second step of the project, partners developed the operation and promotion of sports facilities carried out by the municipalities and sport communities.5 groups in Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Malta worked at a local level to raise awareness and to exploit local activities as:  gender team building, peer to peer gender sport training supervised by a mentor (COACH), sharing of experiences and collecting of needs and finally a roll out of good actions against discrimination and social exclusion as well as a concrete alternative in sport against (sport) bullying among young people. The objective was to promote the disciplines and their educational following.

Step 3 – International Networking. The third part of the project was dedicated to the networking . We organized one transnational training course about topics of gender traditional sport and  one final evaluation seminar in order to collect suggestion and ideas developed on the theme of the project.

Partners of the project are  7 youth NGOs  working with young people,   from-    Bulgaria, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Romania-  new and old EU Member States and Candidate country - where gender sport issues represents one of the most vivid issues on the national and European agenda.

A publication and a website are produced in the framework of the project.