From Participation to Employability: How ENGSO Youth Is Empowering Young People Through Sport

While YouthSportCV focuses on helping young people recognise and validate the valuable skills they develop through sport, EUYOUSPORT works to ensure that young people have a meaningful voice in the decision-making processes of sport organisations. Together, these projects demonstrate how sport can serve as both a pathway to employment and a platform for democratic participation.

YouthSportCV: Recognising Skills That Matter

Young people develop a wide range of transferable skills through sport, including teamwork, leadership, communication, resilience, problem-solving, and responsibility, just to name a few. However, these competences often go unrecognised when entering the labour market.

The YouthSportCV project aims to bridge this gap by creating innovative tools that help young people, particularly those who are not in employment, education or training (NEETs), identify, assess, and showcase the soft skills they have gained through sport. The project is developing a digital self-assessment and certification platform, educational resources for coaches, and pilot programmes that connect young people with employability opportunities in the field of sport. By strengthening the recognition of non-formal learning, YouthSportCV helps young people translate their sporting experiences into real employment opportunities.

EUYOUSPORT: Giving Young People a Real Say in Sport

Empowerment also means ensuring that young people can build on their skills by practice and particularly within EUYOUSPORT project, by actively influence the decisions that affect them.

Through the EUYOUSPORT project, ENGSO Youth is supporting sport organisations across Europe to establish meaningful youth participation mechanisms, such as youth councils, advisory boards, and other structures that enable young people to contribute to governance and decision-making. The project also provides educational opportunities on European youth and sport policy and promotes dialogue between young people and decision-makers. Its goal is to make youth participation a standard practice rather than an exception within the European sport movement.

Two Projects, One Shared Vision

Although they focus on different challenges, YouthSportCV and EUYOUSPORT share the same ambition: empowering young people through sport.

YouthSportCV equips young people with the confidence and evidence to demonstrate the competences they have developed, improving their employability and personal development. EUYOUSPORT complements this by creating opportunities for those same young people to participate in decision-making, influence policies, and become leaders within the sport sector.

Together, the projects promote a holistic approach to youth development, one where young people not only gain valuable skills through sport but are also recognised for those skills and empowered to use them to shape the future of sport in Europe.

As ENGSO Youth continues to implement both initiatives, we remain committed to creating a sport sector that is more inclusive, participatory, and responsive to the needs and aspirations of young people.