Do you have a willingness to obtain new knowledge and statistics on the size and characteristics of the sector?

Are you ready to contribute to the debate to share views and agree priority actions for the sector?

This event is made for you…

The European Sport Skills Summit will be organised in Helsinki (Finland) on 7^th and 8^th of October 2019 as the final stage of the ESSA-Sport project (www.essa-sport.eu) conducted by EOSE.

The Summit will be arranged as a side event related to the Finnish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and will  be associated to the European Vocational Skills Week 2019.

The objectives of the event entitled “Employment trends and workforce development priorities” will be to gather national and European stakeholders and discuss main findings from the work carried out during the ESSA-Sport project.

It will be an opportunity to consult with stakeholders, underline potential solutions, and build a series of concrete recommendations and priority actions  to tackle the identified challenges in achieving a skilled workforce of paid staff and volunteers.

The number of seats available is limited so if you would like to participate in the first ever European Sport Skills Summit please contact us at eosesec@eose.org.

Have a look at the programme here!

The Partnership

EOSE worked on the European Us Girls project with:

StreetGames, a UK Youth Sports charity working with the poorest and most disadvantaged communities.

• The International Sport and Culture Association(ISCA), a democratic, non-governmental, not-for-profit umbrella association with 103 European member organisations and 209 member organisations worldwide.
• UnioneItaliana Sport Per tutti (UISP), an Italian association which aims to extend the right to sport for all citizens.
• V4Sport in Poland aims to increase the number of people who are physically active.
• Women Win are a thought leader organisation, and global convener, strategically positioned at the intersection of women’s rights, international development and sport.

Academic Review

Led by Women Win, the academic research report explores the evidence base for developing female volunteers in sport and physical activity. Its findings helped to underpin the entire European Us Girls project, including the key themes outlined in the e-learning resource.

E-Learning Resources

Underpinned by up-to-date research and supported by industry experts, the e-learning resource is a free online course aimed at developing the knowledge base of individuals wishing to develop female volunteers into peer leaders.

Created by EOSE, StreetGames and V4Sport, the six modules will explore everything from barriers to participation, through to reward schemes and volunteer retention. Users can pick and choose the modules that are most relevant to them and their development, with downloadable resources to refer back to following each module.

The E-Learning is structured in to the following modules

Module 1 – Overcoming barriers for women and girls in sport

• Women and girls in sport
• Benefits of volunteering
• Volunteer life cycle
• Understanding local context

Module 2 – The role of the female peer leader in sport

• Benefits of peer leadership
• International environment- strategic planning, goals
• Role of the peer leader
• Peer leader attributes
• Responsibilities of an organisation

Module 3 – Peer leader recruitment and selection

• Identifying peer leader
• Motivation to become a peer leader
• Selection process
• Project aims
• Barriers to peer leadership

Module 4 – Introduction and orientation for new peer leaders

• Understanding participants needs
• Description of tasks
• Levels of responsibility
• Relationship boundaries
• Goal setting
• How to organize induction session

Module 5 – Developing the skills of peer leaders and progression

• Training opportunities for peer leaders and CV building
• Recognition and rewards
• Developing skills and training opportunities
• Creating personal development plan
• Mentoring

Module 6 – Providing support for peer leaders

• Retention of peer leaders
• Record keeping
• Managing a team of peer leaders
• Peer leaders support strategy
• Peer leader progress, destinations, exit

European Us Girls App

Developed by 20 female leaders from across the UK and Italy, the European Us Girls app features a wide selection of games, icebreakers, energizers and team-building activities to help you and your friends to get active. Each game is quick to set up and simple to play – most don’t even equipment, and can be played in almost any space! Created by V4Sport, the games section will be constantly updated, so keep checking back for more ideas.

Check out the links to all of these great resources on the StreetGames website:

https://network.streetgames.org/european-us-girls

The partners of the GReFORM project met in Palermo (Italy) for a monitoring meeting on the 10th and 11th of July 2019. EOSE was represented by its President, Prof. Thierry Zintz.

EOSE is involved as an active partner with a particular focus on the development of the educational material and the implementation of the quality assessment of the overall project and future e-learning platform.

This project is now half way and a final conference is planned to be arranged in November 2020.

Click here if you want to learn more about the project!

Led by the European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), the project partnership brings together a unique combination of 2 European umbrella bodies, 1 Government Ministry, 2 universities, 3 national sport organisations and 1 global sport for development organisation.

Understanding the potential of sport, examining how it is being delivered, and building an understanding of the skills people need to be effective in their positions will form the basis of this collaborative project. The project is founded on the belief that sport has huge potential to change society and change people but that to do so it needs a workforce of people with the right skills and competences, supported by a fit-for-purpose programme of education, training and professional development.

Through the CHANGE project, the partners will implement the EOSE 7-Step model for lifelong learning and apply the model to the area of sport for development. The project is aligned with EU policies in sport, education and Employment, in particular promoting education in and through sport with a focus on skills development.

The first meeting, hosted by the Italian Sport for All Association (UISP) in Rome, ensured the partners are familiar with the methodology and work plan for the project which will conclude in 2021. The partners also debated key concepts within sport for development to ensure a common understanding.

A website for the project is under development and will be launched soon.

The partners look forward to sharing and engaging with the whole sport sector and particularly organisations and professionals working in sport for development. Interested stakeholders are welcome to contact the project team through EOSE.

Saska Benedicic Tomat, Head of Projects for the International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA) said “it is a pleasure for ISCA to be partners in the CHANGE project to define skills and competence for sport for development. It is important to follow proven and sustainable concepts like the 7-Step Model developed by EOSE. It provides a safe place for organisational capacity building, as well as strategic guidelines for EU policy development in the field of sport and education”.

Ben Gittus, Director of Standards for EOSE said ”we’re delighted to start work with this unique partnership to support the area of sport for development in Europe using the lifelong learning strategy promoted by EOSE known as the 7 Step Mode

>> Full list of partners

European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE); International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA); University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (UNICAS); Leeds Beckett University; The Greek General Secretariat for Sports; The Italian Sport for All Association (USIP); Sport Union of Slovenia (SUS); StreetGames; and Women Win.

>> Contact
Ben Gittus – EOSE Director of Standards – ben.gittus@eose.org

CHANGE leaflet (English)

The meeting, chaired by the European Association of Sport Employers (EASE) and the European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), gathered 17 participants representing 12 European associations and network organisations involved in the sport sector in Europe.

>> ESSA-Sport

The European Sector Skills Alliance for Sport and Physical Activity (ESSA-Sport) is a three-year initiative funded under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The aim is to produce the first EU wide employment and skills map for the whole sector.

The holding of the European Associations Expert Advisory Group is part of the drive within the project to engage and consult the whole sport and physical activity sector in Europe on employment and skills issues.

>> European Sport Labour Market statistics

The ESSA-Sport partnership has gathered available data at the European and national level on the number of people employed in the sector, with further analysis looking at characteristics of the workforce including gender, age, level of education and type of contract.

The overall working methodology was presented and some of the key findings discussed by the group including:

• A total of 1 726 201 people working in the sport sector identified for 2017. This represents a 16.5% growth in the overall sport labour market from 2011 to 2017
• 62% of the labour market being present in four countries: UK, Germany, Spain, France
• The percentage for male and female in the workforce is the same as the average for the entire EU labour market at around 54% male and 46% female
• There is a higher proportion of young workers in sport than the average across all sectors in the EU, 21.7% in sport versus 8.5% in all sectors
• There is a much higher prevalence of part time and self-employed work in sport than the average across all sectors in the EU. Part time workers in sport represent 43.5% of the workforce versus 18.5% in the wider workforce; self-employed workers in sport represent 21.1% of the workforce versus 15.5% of self-employed in the wider workforce

The group looked at the figures for those holding a sport-specific occupation (known in the statistics as ISCO 342 e.g. a coach or instructor) and the figures for those working in sport organisations (known as NACE 93.1 e.g. sport clubs, fitness centres) – when looking at the size of the sector it is important to understand the statistical definitions being used. 

It is important to test statistics with experts who understand the real situation in the sector. Overall the group felt the figures looked credible and realistic.

There was some surprise at the high percentage of female workers in the statistics (45%), there is a need to look at the jobs they are performing but the group felt it is encouraging nonetheless.

While the age range of sport workers was as expected the group felt the sector should prepare for a generational shift as the current workforce with a large proportion in the middle age band moves towards retirement age.

The group also felt the higher than average number of self-employed people in the sector pointed to the need for business skills training and developing entrepreneurship skills in the workforce.

The number of professional athletes and players in the figures was thought to be lower than the real number of people holding contracts and receiving payment to compete in sport.  The possible reasons for this were discussed.

The group would have liked to see more information on the effect of seasonal work on the figures as this type of work figures strongly in the sport sector. This is unfortunately very limited within available statistics.

Overall the group felt the quality and level of detail in the figures and graphs presented will provide a quality resource for the sport sector, which will be of great value to employees, students, job seekers, sport associations, policy makers, academics and employers.

It was agreed by all that regular collection of such data will be beneficial to the sector, and it would also be useful to work with Eurostat to look at the potential for refining the data and the classifications applied to sport to aid analysis within the sector. 

>> European Employer Skills Survey main findings

The event gave the opportunity to present the findings from the first ever European Employer Skills Survey for the whole sport and physical activity sector. The survey had been available across Europe, in 20 languages.

A total of 3812 valid responses were received to the survey, with the most represented type of organisation being sport clubs and federations. The majority of respondents represented a not-for-profit/ charitable organisation, and 50% of organisations had less than five employees (reinforcing the fact the sector is based on micro and small businesses). France was the most represented country and the first recommendation from the group was in future to look at targets for each country and scaling.

It was agreed that EOSE should carry out these surveys on a biennial basis, working wherever possible with national partner organisations to optimise responses and improve the sample so that it is more representative of the EU workforce as a whole. 

Key findings presented to the group included:

• 80% of organisations expect their workforce to stay the same or grow, showing a stable and growing sector.
• Over 82% of organisations represented engaged volunteers.  This demonstrates their importance to the sector
• There is a high level of self-employment in some parts of the sector
• Recruitment and retention present a problem for a significant number of organisations
• Many barriers to training staff are reported to be related to finance and the availability of relevant and accessible training.

The main training needs for each occupation included in the study were also discussed by the group.

The group discussed the role of volunteers in sport and particularly the fact that 50% of respondents have the same expectations of volunteers as for paid staff.

Discussion of the results for employment opportunities resulted in agreement that developing methods to promote career progression and transition is important, and this can include a “recognition of prior learning – RPL” process – particularly for volunteers who may have acquired many skills but have no credit for these.

Training needs were determined by looking in the figures at which skills were seen by respondents to be both important in their workforce but also with a high level of weakness. It was observed that soft skills such as communication are seen as an important training need in all occupations.

In the section on recruitment, lack of skills was seen as one difficulty and the group felt this could be explained by an “over supply” of graduates in the sector with high education but sometimes without required skills.

Finally, under training issues, the group agreed that it is important to exploit technology and distance learning, as one response to tackling issues of finance available for training in sport organisations and the accessibility of relevant courses.

>> Next steps

The discussion at the event was invaluable to allow the partners to go forward with the development of the ESSA-Sport European Report, which will contain a summary of the findings from the project (employment data and employer survey) and produce recommendations for the sector.

Participants in the working group were thanked for their contribution towards producing the recommendations.

The next major event in the calendar for the ESSA-Sport project will be the first EU Sport Summit on 07-08 October 2019 in Helsinki, Finland. The project will finish at the end of October and the partners look forward to publishing all results and findings as well as recommendations and action plans for the development of employment and skills in the sport sector at both national and European level.

The conference was hosted by the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO) and the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) in Frankfurt, Germany. It brought together a wide range of stakeholders, such as practitioners, experts and decision-makers from sport governing bodies, sport organisations, NGOs, foundations, think thanks, research institutes, universities and governments in the field of social inclusion through sport. EOSE was represented by Camille Demeulemeester, Project Officer.

After the opening message, delivered by the DOSB Vice President, the first part of the conference aimed to share expert and proven advice for success; and to facilitate exchange and raise awareness on the added value of sport in promoting sport for inclusion. Key scientific results, conclusions and recommendations on the potential, challenges and successes of sport as a context to help the social inclusion of migrants and refugees were presented.

Following the symposium, the group split up into workshop groups in order to discuss “on offering and sustaining suitable participation opportunities for migrants and refugees” and “developing sport for refugees as a priority in the organisation”. Workshops provided a fantastic opportunity to give the floor to the participants and gather all ideas and experiences about the way we need to tackle migrant issues in sport organisations.

Finally, a High-Level Panel Discussion was organised which gathered UNCHR Senior Refugee Sports Coordinator, UEFA Social Responsibility Manager, PRODYNA Chair of the Board and former refugees. This Panel Discussion aimed to share tools, experiences and create the opportunity to exchange about the better inclusion of refugees through sport. Main inputs from the panel included demonstrating how to open sports clubs to refugees and contribute to social inclusion through sport. Inspiring example were showcased such as the journey made so far by a former refugee, to now become a high level football referee.

SchweryCade Deputy Director Daniel Cade and ENGSO Secretary General Stefan Bergh then concluded the ASPIRE Final Conference presenting the conclusions of the day and closing remarks.

Alongside the conference, on the following day, Camille Demeulemeester attended the ASPIRE Final Partner Meeting in order to exchange and debrief about the Conference, finalise the administrative process and celebrate the end of the project.

Further information available on www.aspiresport.eu 

The overall goal of the project is to provide support to sport organisations to safeguard the integrity of their sport(s) and to strengthen their governance (www.points-project.com).  

This third seminar gathered 25 participants responsible for sports integrity from 16 different sport organisations and was designed to share information and tools, to clarify responsibilities and expectations, and overall to enhance the skills and competences of the participants acting as single point of contact (SPOCs).

The three days were organised through a mix of plenary and working group sessions focusing on the importance of cooperation between the SPOCs and international stakeholders, on the potential creation of a European network of SPOCs, and on the skills needed to perform as a SPOC. Some high-level speakers and guests presented a sample of good practice examples.

Moreover, a group simulation with three concrete cases dealing with the topic of harassment and abuses were arranged to enable participants to exchange, debate and use the specific tools presented during the seminar.

The final part of the seminar was dedicated to a live assessment of the overall educational programme and this was coordinated by Aurélien Favre from the European Observatoire of Sport and Employment. The aim was to collate comments from the participants about the three educational seminars and to underline the strengths and areas of improvement for future training in the are of sports integrity.

The POINTS project is ongoing with the organisation of 14 national workshops in the upcoming months before a final conference that will take place in Brussels at the end of 2020.

This provided an ideal opportunity for EOSE to meet with sport representatives from outside the European Union. An exploratory seminar was organised on the 25^th of May and gathered together EOSE and the National Olympic Committee (NOC) from four countries in the Western Balkans: Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

The purpose of this seminar was to introduce EOSE, ecxchange realities and common challenges, and discuss potential collaboration in the future.

After an opening message and a tour de table, Thierry Zintz provided an introduction to EOSE. He presented the background, expertise, aims and network of the organisation. Following the EOSE presentation and a presentation of EU Policies in Sport, Eudcation and Employment, several topics were discussed such as realities of the sector and national challenges around skills development.

After this productive discussion, Thierry Zintz introduced the topic of EU funding and a new Call for Proposals, and discussed the potential for collaboration. It was underlined that it could be a great opportunity not only for EOSE but also for the Western Balkans NOCs to develop such a partnership for the benefit of the sector.

This was followed by an open discussion on the interest of becoming a member of EOSE and joining a broad network of organisations dedicated to sport and employment

At this meeting EOSE was represented by Director of Standards, Ben Gittus, and Executive Board members Simone Digennaro and Abel Santos.

The full day of the meeting on the 16^th of May kicked off with a welcome from the European Commission and introduction of delegates. 22 Member States were represented at the meeting by their Ministry responsible for sport or a delegate nominated by the Ministry.

The European Commission then updated delegates on a range of issues, including a recap of the EU Sport Forum which took place in April 2019 in Romania, an overview of the number and types of applications received under the most recent Erasmus+ Sport call (April 2019), the future budget for Erasmus+ Sport and the Be Inclusive initiative.

The rest of the morning session was taken up with presentations and discussion in the area of education of coaches. Current EU funded projects related to coach education were presented before a discussion took place about the draft Guidelines regarding the basic requirements in skills and competences for coaches which will be produced as an output of this Expert Group. The morning session also saw a presentation from Supporters Direct Europe updating the group on their work in the development of football.

In the afternoon session, EOSE were invited to speak to the group about the European Sector Skills Alliance project (ESSA-Sport www.essa-sport.eu). Ben Gittus and Simone Digennaro delivered the presentation and covered two main areas: the collection of labour market statistics in sport and the first findings of the first ever European Employer Skills Survey which was undertaken as part of the ESSA-Sport project funded under Erasmus+.

The group were very interested to hear about the initial labour market figures and results of the skills survey and look forward to receiving more detailed results of the work. The group were invited to the first ever European Sport Skills Summit that will take place in Helsinki, Finland on 7/8 October 2019.

Yves Le Lostecque, Head of the Sport Unit at the European Commission stated at the end of the EOSE presentation that it is good to see EU funding supporting a project such as ESSA-Sport which contributes new knowledge to the sport sector.

The day closed with a presentation on the Portuguese Sport System.

EOSE is delighted to attend the Expert Group as Observer and contribute to discussions on the future of skills development in sport in Europe.

The meeting was attended by the development leads from seven of the leading national hockey federations, as well as colleagues from FIH, the International federation for hockey.

The first part of the meeting was dedicated to updates from national federations about their development strategy and how they are developing hockey in their country through various campaigns, projects and pr‎ogrammes.

Ben presented and discussed the role of EOSE and provided an update on EU sport policy and funding programmes. Ben also provided hints and tips for applying for EU funding and gave examples of projects including the ONSIDE project to develop sport officials in Europe (see www.onside-sport.eu).