Youth-led Street Sport for All

‘Youth-led Street Sport for All’ (YSSA) aims to increase participation in sports, strengthen social inclusion and promote voluntary activity amongst disadvantaged children and youth in Italy, Greece, Malta, Lithuania and Denmark. ‘Youth-Led Street Sport for All’ is a Collaborative Partnership funded by the Erasmus Plus Sport program.

Across Europe, young people are searching for ways to live healthier, to have greater economic opportunity, and to find real and meaningful ways to both belong to society and contribute to it. At the same time, the world is passing through a massive refugee crisis which offers challenges to the social cohesion within and among many European countries.

During the project lifetime 600 young role models will be trained to reach out to 5,000 kids from underserved communities to invite them to take part in community street sports activities. This will get more kids moving and will help them feel more at home in their local community and society at large: a ripple effect that should create a safer, more active – physically & civically – and cohesive Europe.

As we work with and empower these young people, these five partners will collaborate on best-practices education guides that will help organizations around Europe and the world create innovative outdoor and indoor street sports facilities as hubs for urban sports and youth voluntarism.

The program will deliver three crucial intellectual outputs:

The output will be a transnational Playmaker (volunteer) Curriculum which consists of a package of educational modules, with specific training themes and learning goals that increase the children and young people’s personal and interpersonal social and cultural skills, as well as their capabilities to make solid decisions. It will be developed, implemented, and tested in the partner countries and contexts with a potential to build a stronger and more versatile concept that can later be scaled and implemented in other European countries.

An Online Playmaker Toolbox will serve as a free, online, learning platform for all Playmakers, a sharing dialogue promoting platform and a street sport compendium with drills and training materials combined with the empowerment goals central to the project. The toolbox will furthermore have an interactive feautre where key volunteers can report and share results from local activities.

A Street Sport Facility Guide to establish and operate outdoor and indoor sport facilities

Please take a minute to meet the partners on this page and learn about their work.

Interested in knowing more?
Contact Emily V. Ronek, International Partnership Manager in GAME: evr@game.ngo.

DENMARK (Project organizer): GAME

GAME is a street sport NGO founded in 2002. GAME’s mission is to create lasting social change through youth-led street sports and culture. The program is a fusion of different urban sports, dance, urban culture and an effort to bridge between differences. The activities are executed by a numerous group of young leaders trained by GAME as street basket and street soccer coaches as well as dance and parkour instructors and event managers.

LITHUANIA: VSI Integracijos Centras (Integration Center)

VSI Integracijos Centras (Integration Center) is a NGO aimed at the social integration of minorities in Lithuania. The organization believes that the key to welfare, stability, democracy, and tolerance is the successful integration of all the social and ethnic groups in society. Though the organisation is itself young, the experience within the organisation is high: It has united experienced professionals working in the sphere of integration for more than 5 years with volunteers from all over Lithuania in order to help the minorities in the country. Currently, Integracijos Centras are focusing on ethnic minorities, mainly refugees that are arriving in Europe.

MALTA: MOVE

The Maltese NGO MOVE was founded to promote a new culture of movement. MOVE works mainly with young people coming from all walks of life and their mission is to create a lasting social change through sports and culture.

Move’s vision is that each and every child and youth should have access to sports and culture and thus be empowered to live a healthier and happier life.

ITALY: CESIE

CESIE is a European centre of studies and initiatives inspired by the work and theories of the sociologist Danilo Dolci (1924-1997). CESIE’s mission is to promote growth through innovative and participative educational approaches.

CESIE breaks with an ethnocentric global drive and focuses on individuals and diversity. They apply the teaching of Danilo Dolci who developed innovative educational non-violent methods.

GREECE: ARSIS

ARSIS – the Association for the Social Support of Youth – is an NGO specializing in the social support of youth that are in difficulty or danger and in the advocacy of their rights. The main target is the prevention of youth marginalization, the elaboration of policies which defend youth rights and the active social support towards disadvantaged young people.

ARSIS’s vision is a society of equal opportunities for all young individuals with respect of their rights like those that are outlined in the Greek and International Law through the UN pact for Children’s Rights.

European Union: Erasmus+

Collaborative Partnerships promote the creation and development of European networks in the fields of sport.

Erasmus+ support the testing and development of new project formats and new forms of transnational cooperation in the field of sport that are likely to inspire the development, on a larger scale of initiatives supported with national funding schemes or other European funds, such as the European Structural and Investment Funds.