European Us Girls Project

The overall aim of European Us Girls (EUG) was to promote voluntary activities in sport, together with social inclusion, equal opportunities and awareness of the importance of health-enhancing physical activity for young women and girls. We believe we have achieved this aim by producing innovative learning resources and new research, as well as connecting stakeholders from a range of sectors. We have developed innovative, beneficiary led tools to support the development of volunteer female peer leaders within communities. This will in turn support the increased awareness and subsequent participation in health-enhancing physical activities by other young women and girls.The project aim has been underpinned by a set of 5 objectives, and associated activities and outputs. We have delivered every activity originally described and produced all of the outputs. Objective 1: Establish a strong international evidence base supporting the role of volunteers to improve equal access and inclusion to grassroots sport and physical activityObjective 2: Develop innovative tools to build capacities in stakeholder organisations to deliver opportunities for young women with fewer opportunitiesObjective 3: Establish a large cross sector network of organisations in this fieldObjective 4: Disseminate project results and assure a wide impact of the projectObjective 5: Ensure quality in the management of this project, in particular coordination, monitoring, and evaluationThe project activities and outputs are described in detail throughout this report, but we would like to highlight the following results;•1 new piece of academic research with an additional executive summary and 28 international case studies•1 high quality and innovative e-learning platform that is open access and houses 6 interactive modules to develop understanding around the topic of female peer leadership•2 high quality and informative project videos highlighting the benefits of health enhancing physical activity, and the benefits of peer leadership•2 online networking platforms that are currently connecting 94 stakeholders•2 successful test events to ensure the project outputs were beneficiary led•5 successful project meetings•4 national and 1 international exploitation eventsThe project has been successfully led by StreetGames (SG), with a project team of 5 other partners: European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), France; International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA), Denmark; Unione Italiana Sport Per tutti (UISP), Italy; V4Sport (V4S), Poland and Women Win (WW), Netherlands.All project partners were committed to involving beneficiaries throughout the design and development of the project outputs and have remained true to this ambition. 20 female peer leaders and 6 policy experts have helped to shape the e-learning and the project videos, ensuring relevancy and authenticity. Referring to the collaborative design of the videos, one female peer leaders commented “everyone’s ideas were listened to and you can see elements of everyone in the work we have done.” and since the preview of the videos “It’s just exactly what we talked about. It’s amazing!”We consider EUG to be an example of good practice. All partners are committed to continuing to monitoring local impact, with a number of partners exploring joint funding opportunities for further collaboration together. The 20 female peer leaders remain engaged in the UK and Italy, with details of their further involvement explained in the project report.Overall, EUG has been highly successful, with one partner stating that “this has been one of the most enjoyable projects I have worked on in over 20 years.” It has also highlighted the need for more projects and collaborations focusing on female participation, female volunteers and the field of female peer leadership.