BOOST

Duration: 01/11/2024 - 01/11/2026

Aim of the project

Nelson Mandela once said that Sport has the Power to Change the World. This is a bold statement that most European sports stakeholders strongly believe in, and to which more and more contribute through both explicit and implicit Sport for Good (S4G) initiatives. But although most professionals working in European grassroots sports organisations are aware of the potential to contribute to a positive social impact, many entry-level professionals still lack specific knowledge to exploit the full potential of S4G by designing impactful grassroots sports programmes that intentionally include personal development aspects. And at the same time, those professionals who are well capable of designing such impactful S4G programmes, often lack expertise in setting up and growing appropriate organisational architectures, which is needed to provide a sustainable S4G offer to European sports participants.

The BOOST project aims to empower S4G professionals to collaborate and accelerate strategies to improve their organisational architecture to make it more sustainable and improve their S4G programme offering so that it can have a greater impact. Through interconnected learning, mentoring, and design-thinking approaches, the accelerator connects entry-level to mid-level professionals across S4G impact fields with experienced S4G mentors and experts. It leads to co-creating and directly implementing innovative and applicable solutions in practice. Ultimately, this leads to an S4G sector that is strengthened in its role as a community of interest to develop more sustainable and impactful programmes for their participants; with positive outcomes on individual and social domains, such as health, education, inclusion, environmental sustainability, employability, or social cohesion.

Activities

• Co-creating a twelve-month accelerator concept and process that includes a mentoring approach. 
• Co-creating a learning hub with applicable thematic learning materials, plus mentoring resources. 
• Implementing a mentee and mentor identification process, and matchmaking procedure. 
• Identifying common and individual learning goals, plus implementing mentor trainings. 
• Piloting our accelerator and mentoring programme with S4G professionals across Europe. This leads to new or improved S4G programmes and organisational structures in the organisations of the participating professionals. 
• Validating and reviewing the quality and applicability of all accelerator elements. 
• Developing a sustainability roadmap to reach out to more professionals and to create a strong community of interest dedicated to sport for good. 

Expected Results

• An increased offering of quality S4G programmes that are guided by clear educational concepts 
• More well-governed and healthy organisations being active in the field
• Increased knowledge and skills of S4G professionals across Europe and beyond, 
• Improved exchange of good practice and a transfer of innovation between S4G professionals
• Increased standards of organisational architecture and good governance in the S4G sector, 
• Examples of quality benchmarks for S4G organisations and their activities
• Reduced the risk of unintended and harmful outcomes of S4G activities
• Improved credibility of S4G implementing organisations towards public and private funders
• Maximise European grassroots sport organisations’ contributions to the UN SDG
• Strengthened S4G sector in its role as a community of interest to create positive outcomes in individual and social domains, such as health, education, social inclusion, employability, conflict resolution, environmental development, or social cohesion.

Ultimately, this project shall lead to a S4G sector that is strengthened in its role as a community of interest as a whole, to help foster health and well-being, education, equality and social inclusion, social cohesion, environmental sustainability, plus employability and employment, or other non-sport-related societal and European policy objectives.

Partners

• SPIN SPORT INNOVATION GMBH & CO KG (Germany) 
• SPORT AND SUSTAINABILITY INTERNATIONAL (SANDSI) (Switzerland) 
• OPES Organizzazione per L'Educazione allo Sport (Italy)
• RHEINFLANKE GGMBH (Germany)
• MUNDUS BULGARIA Bulgaria 
• ERICEIRA SURF CLUBE (Portugal)