EUYOUSPORT Final Conference: Evidence-based youth participation in sport governance: from policy to practice
The EUYOUSPORT project started two years ago with one main objective in mind: to create youth participation mechanisms in sport governance. For that reason, it gathered expert partners (ENGSO Youth, German Sports Youth, EUSA and Cyprus Youth Council) and implementing partners wanting to create youth participation mechanisms and foster youth participation in sport governance (Finnish Olympic Committee, Portuguese Sports Confederation, OPES).
Within the overall framework of the final conference, project partners held a side event on October 14th, exploring with a group of 35 young leaders what participation in sport governance really meant and how it could be improved. Based on Roger Hart’s ladder of participation, the participants tried to brainstorm on whether young people are currently climbing the ladder or just holding it. Interestingly, the discussions also highly focused on the non-participatory levels of the ladder, which depicts an environment where youth are increasingly more aware of what should and should not constitute meaningful youth participation, a vital step towards advocating and developing actual participation in sport governance.
Fast forward to the Final Conference (and with a Transnational Partner Meeting in between), the event presented the current state of play of youth participation in sport governance around Europe. Spoiler alert! Young people continue to be the main actors in terms of practicing sports and volunteering, but remain largely excluded from decision-making processes. You can have a deeper look into this through our pilot survey report available here.
Building on the findings of the survey, we were joined by professor Anna-Maria Strittmatter from Örebro University, Sweden. Expert in sports management and youth participation in sports and drawing from her research into the topic, professor Anna-Maria explained how organisational cultures, norms and established practices may contribute to the structural underrepresentation of young people in sport governance, and which policies could reverse the current situation.
From research and policy to practice, we heard about the success stories of Luca Wernert, Siiri Turunen, young leaders themselves, pushing for more youth participation in sport governance at both national and European level.
To summarise just a couple of the projects achievements:
- The Finnish Olympic Committee created a youth committee within its structure;
- OPES implemented in Italy a participation mechanism similar to the EU Youth Dialogue existing at European level;
- The Portuguese Sports Confederation laid the foundations to propose to its members a youth platform for young people’s exchange of ideas and participation;
The above-mentioned constitute just a couple of the project’s main achievements, which can be consulted on the EUYOUPORT landing page.
Fair to say, from everything we manage to achieve within the EUYOUSPORT project, although still a lot remains to be done in terms of youth participation in sport governance, young people are slowly making their way from holding the ladder to actually climbing it.
ENGSO Youth would like to thank the EUYOUSPORT project partners for their cooperation and commitment to youth participation, and to all the participants and partners that attended the project events, cooperated with us and contributed to the success of the project.
