Bike For Europe

The Bike for Europe cross border cycling tour had its overarching objective to provide a pan-European event promoting the European Week of Sport (EWoS) in the weeks leading up to it, culminating in a cross-sector PR event in Vienna, Austria to mark the opening day of EWoS on 22nd of September.The tour was a journey of two teams of 5 recreational cyclists on a journey across opposite sides of Europe to be united in Vienna after 22 days. The North Team started in Drenthe, the Netherlands and the South Team in Thessaloniki, Greece and each team cycled around 3500 kilometres before they reached Vienna.The project raised awareness among European citizens about the opportunities offered in the upcoming European Week of Sport (EWoS), and the benefits of being physically active through recreational cycling. We engaged communities along EuroVelo routes in 11 countries physically in side events and digital communication efforts, and other participants Europe-wide through an online activation platform. The innovative Donate Your KM-s section was opened on the website so that ordinary citizens who couldn’t take part in the events could still contribute to the project and donate their cycling km-s to the cause of the project and showing their support to the integration of refugees through sport. A total of 11 378 participants from 79 countries donated their cycling kilometres that definitely helped to widen the scope of the project and engage with a bigger audience. Additionally, a Strava Live-Feed was embedded into the official website, which enabled visitors to always know where the teams are, how many kilometres they’ve already cycled and at what speed they are moving. According to the report of our external media monitoring agency, 218 editorial mentions with a potential reach 22,8 million where registered. New networks and partnerships were established to maintain a legacy and work towards the implementations of the event in the coming years.The tour took its starting point from a concept tested by ISCA back in 2015 and was followed up through different cycling initiatives in the following years. These projects demonstrated great potential for the event to be rolled out as a larger scale European event, with necessary adjustments made according to the learnings from previous cycling initiatives. The previous tours helped to build ISCA’s position in the field of recreational cycling, active mobility and social inclusion through sport that were utilised in the Bike For Europe project. We demonstrated that a symbolic activity in the form of a “bike tour across Europe” connects the key aspects of the EWoS and reached a wider audience thanks to the broader-reaching social media and PR campaign. The online activation platform with detailed information about the tour and different means to engage with the project were emphasized. The cross border cycling tour that brings together different stakeholders to work on the international level has shown that cycling has an important impact to communicate the important cross-sector aspect of the EWoS. The project and tour have demonstrated a combination of local, national and European activities, allowing a total of 125 local side events with 20 000 participants both on and off the route, national kick-off meetings, promotional advocacy event in Brussels, a culmination in Vienna and providing digital means for everyone to be involved through the Donate Your Kilometres option. Another The Bike for Europe promoted voluntary activities in sport focusing especially on the social inclusion through sport topic by involving volunteers in organization, promotion and dissemination of the events. Last but not least, all members of the cycling team were also volunteers themselves.Link to the PPT presentation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjlh4vxnkf6cgk4/Annex%209_%20BFE%20Report%20with%20numbers%20and%20objectives.pptx?dl=0