WAVE on WAVE – Water sports for young people’s physical activity

WOW project has been submitted under the Erasmus Plus Programme – Collaborative Partnership in the field of Sport with the aim to reduce sedentary attitude and promote physical activity by increasing the number of people practicing water sports, working in particular on young people. Partnership was established bringing together private and public organizations, thus guaranteeing a multi-dimensional approach to project topics. Partnership composition, as duly explained within the present report, faced several changes during the project lifecycle. N. 2 PPs left the project (Pomeranian Sailing Association, Dubrovnik City) during its implementation. A further PP joined the project (Yacht Club Capt G. Georgiev – Port Varna) by replacing Pomeranian Sailing Association. Such unexpected situations, together with the low experience of some PPs in dealing with European Funds, caused some delay within the project work plan. A strong effort in terms of coordination and management activities as well as a 3 months project extension approved by EACEA, allowed the whole partnership to finalize project activities and achieve project objectives and results. Concerning the work plan, activities have been divided in WPs. WP1-PROJECT MANAGEMENT, MONITORING AND COORDINATION and WP4-COMMUNICATION, DISSEMINATION AND EXPLOITATION, as transversal WPs, lasted for the whole duration of the project (i.e. 01/01/2017 – 31/03/2019). WP1 was managed by Municipality of Pesaro in its role of project Lead Partner. Thanks to an expert working group made supported by all PPs involved, project activities were managed and monitored on a regular basis by Municipality of Pesaro, from a financial, administrative and implementation point of view. A strong relevance was given to communication and dissemination activities in order to promote project visibility at local and transnational level. In this regards, several actions and events to promote water sport among youngs and local communities took place during project implementation, bringing the following outputs and results: a project website (http://www.waveonwaveproject.eu/), linked to YouTube channel, and FB page visited by more than 70 people and with more than 7000 interactions and opened pages. Communication materials and gadget (540 T-shirts, 440 Bags, 20 Garments, 300 Key chains, 15 Hats, 100 Water bottles, 155 Backpacks, 255 Notebooks, 255 Pens, 100 Pencils, 50 Phone holsters, 100 Calenders, 100; Magnets, 220 Posters, 3000 Brochures, 100 Booklet: 3 Roll up, 200 Folders), with a strong reference with the project and the ERASMUS Programme were produced and distributed among local communities, citizens and young generation, fostering a sport for all approach. Furthermore, on September 2017 and 2018, each PP organize the Sport for All Fests (11 editions organized within the project), a local event dedicated to sport promotion involving local stakeholders and citizens. The core technical activities of WOW project were represented by WP2 – PRELIMINARY ACTIVITIES and WP3 – KNOWLEDGE LAB (KLAB) AND SPORT FOR ALL PATH. WP2 aimed at mapping the local sport ecosystems and set up the Local Interest Committee (LIC), a group of local sport actors, supporting PPs in the implementation of project activities and in the drafting and adoption of a Memorandum of Understanding for the WOW common strategy implementation in the long term. Main outputs/results related to WP2 are: n. 5 sport ecosystems mapped, n. 5 LIC set up, n. 1 WOW common strategy adopted by all the Partners. Within WP3, PPs organized n. 2 KLABs (Nancy and Varna) were technical experts, coming from the 5 local sport ecosystems, defined innovative methodologies to promote water sports among young people. The new techniques and methodologies for sport education developed through the KLABs were tasted through the organization of the WOW Sport for All Path (1st edition in Getxo and 2nd edition in Pesaro) bringing together more than 70 children/students.