Welcome by France Éducation international

Created by 5 European countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Greece and Northern Macedonia, the European project IDI4Sport "Inclusion and Disabilities In, and Through Sport" aims to develop sport for children with disabilities against the backdrop of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (OPG). It is designed to promote social inclusion, increase the participation of children with disabilities and reduce the difficulties they face, as well as creating inclusive environments that promote fairness and equality. It is aimed at teachers, sports coaches, and children in primary and secondary schools. 

This project also benefits from the support of several Olympic and Paralympic athletes, the Greek Paralympic Committee, the Spanish Higher Sports Council, as well as Mr. Thierry Terret, former rector, ministerial delegate for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and now appointed by presidential decree as vice-rector of French Polynesia.

1/ Definition, values, activities, and target groups
Definition

The IDI4Sport project aims to promote social inclusion and to reach to the participation of young people with disabilities in and through sport, as well as contributing to create inclusive environments that foster equity and equality, and that are responsive to the needs of the wider young disabled people community. The main objective of the project is to develop their participation in sport, to reduce the difficulties they encounter when they want to participate in sport and to find ways to make these difficulties disappear, to make them want to go further and fight positively like Olympic athletes do, and simply to give them a dream.

Values

• Work with both schools and sports clubs, as young people encounter these difficulties in their overall environment and not specifically in one setting,
• Support the development of sport in both formal and non-formal settings,
• Better teach and communicate the legacy of the 2024 Olympic Games and its heritage,
• Enhance access to sport training and qualifications for all,
• Develop sport skills to improve social involvement of young people with disabilities,
• Develop relationships between formal and non-formal education in support of OG 2024 awareness,
• Recognise their participation in sports activities with the creation of a specific European Label “European Generation 2030”. This Label is looking for the creation of a real Sport Generation 2030, inscribed in respect to the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030 and winks to the Generation 2024 label already created for the OG 2024 in France,
• Valorise and communicate about the participation of young people with disabilities in and through sport.

Activities

• The design of a methodological framework,
• The selection of the activities and their adaptation at European level,
• The creation of a toolbox/a padlet to provide the necessary resources and biography, to teachers and sport trainers,
• The design of new activities with clearly formulated objectives and instructions which can be supplemented with didactic resources,
• The creation of a training pathway with different modules and training sessions for the educators.

Target groups

1. The teachers and sport trainers
2. The children and pupils
3. People in direct contact with the participants and national and European policy makers (Indirect target group)

2/ Duration and working phases
The duration of the IDI4Sport project will be 36 months from 01/01/2023 to 31/12/2025 distributed in 4 different main phases:

Phase 1: Collection of resources and creation of the database

Objectives: Phase 1 aims to collect resources and good practices from each country to study and compare the state of art of the adaptions on sport practices made for children with disabilities. 

Phase 2: The creation of a systemic pathway based on the resources collected.

Objectives: Phase 2 aims to create a training pathway for teachers, sport trainers, educators, educational staff who work with children with disabilities. This training pathway will be based on the resources and pedagogical material collected by every country (the online database). It will select and organize activities, workshops, and adaptations that will be implemented in schools and sports clubs with children.

Phase 3: Experimentation of the training on pupils and its evaluation.

Objectives: aims to experiment the modelled training pathway created for teachers and sports trainers in schools and sports clubs in the different partners countries assess its impact on the participants, schools, sports clubs’ staff, teachers, trainers, and students (with a quantitative and qualitative evaluation). 

Phase 4: Dissemination, legacy, and sustainability of the project

Objectives: to ensure that the project is known outside of the partnership. It will be followed by a sustainability strategy for all partners to make sure that the project and its results will last after the end of the funding.

3/ Partners of the Project
The consortium reflects the diversity of the project, in:

• Its geopolitical aspects with a particular attention on Greece and Northern Macedonia working all together.
• Its structure system containing Governmental organisation (France), Public Institute of Sport (Portugal), National Olympic Committee (Rep. North Macedonia), University (Greece), research Centre (France) or NGO’s (Denmark and Spain),
• Its large-scale expertise with specialists of education, sport, Olympic Games gathering formal and non-formal education.

 

France Education International is a public institution and key operator of the French Ministry for National Education, Youth and Sports. In 2021, FEI carried out more than 200 specific communication campaigns with targeted audience reaching 1 235 000 recipients with for example the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister responsible for people with disabilities.

Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth, IPDJ, is a public body organisation attached to the Portuguese Ministry of Education responsible for the support, the definition, the execution, and the evaluation of the public policies. Its main missions are to promote the generalization of sport participation, support regular physical activity and sport practice and develop high-performance sports through technical, human, and financial resources.

The Olympic Committee of North Macedonia, OCNM, is part of the Paralympic Association of North Macedonia and Special Olympics North Macedonia. The OCNM supports all events that these two organisations organize on an annual basis such as the European Basketball week, European Football week, 3rd December (National holiday devoted to the people with disabilities) and many more regarding logistics, streaming or even financially.

University of Macedonia, Greece, and the department of Educational and Social Policy implements contemporary teaching models for training pre-service and in-service teachers of students with disabilities. UoM places students for apprenticeships in special, mainstream, preschool, primary, secondary, technical vocational school units all over the country as well as in institutions abroad through several programmes like Erasmus, AISEC etc. The department is on constant dialogue with society and special education schools/units, mainstream schools, in both primary and secondary education to integrate both theory and practice between all stakeholders working with education.

International Sport and Culture Association, ISCA, is a Danish a democratic, nongovernmental, and not-for-profit umbrella association with 103 European member organisations and 260 member organisations worldwide. ISCA has a wider knowledge to increase citizens participation in recreational sport and physically activity.

Instituto España se Mueve, IEsM, is a non-profit association created in 2014 for the promotion and organisation of activities related to healthy lifestyle habits among all segments of the population. IEsM is specialized in communication and dissemination. It can rely on its important network and connections to all sport and health stakeholders at all levels and all type of format: TV, radio, social media, written press, and websites.

Institut national supérieur formation et recherche - handicap et enseignements adaptés, INSHEA, is a national higher education institute specialised in research and training of people with disabilities under supervision of the Ministry of National Education and Higher Education and Research. Its main activities are the training multidisciplinary research on disability and inclusive education and the creation of adapted pedagogical resources for people with disabilities. INSHEA is currently in a process of name changing to become INSEI.

 

4/ The first Transnational project meeting

All partners all met in University of Macedonia Thessaloniki GREECE last 28th of February 1st and 2nd of March 2023.

For 2,5 days they held the following work sessions:

Roundtable - Presentation of the partners and the project’s activities: all partners

• Workshop – WP1 Management:
• Workshop - WP2 part 1 Resources compendium
• Workshop – WP2 part 2 Pathway training
• Workshop – WP3 Experimentation
• Workshop – WP4 Evaluation
• Workshop – WP5 Communication and dissemination
• Restitution and conclusion

5/ Corporative identity and website

Partners have also designed and produced one of the more important results of IDI4Sport, the logo. Together with the logo of the European Union. It will identify all the outputs resulting of the Erasmus + project.

For more information you can visit the Website of the project

Where to follow the IDI4Sport in the social networks:

#IDI4SPORT

 

6/ Soon to come in IDI4Sport newsletter #2

The next newsletter will be published at the end of 2023 and will provide the following information:

• A state of the art of what the IDI4Sport project has accomplished after one year of duration.
• Information about the 2nd Transnational project meeting to be probably celebrated in Portugal during last trimestral of 2023.
• Complete Interviews of representatives of some of the partners of the IDI4Sport project.
• And much more to come…

 

Disclaimer

IDI4SPORT Project is Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.