South-East European Youth Para-Sport Exchange

Background The importance of sport for people with a disability is undisputed. Sport is a tool to stay healthy and to promote values. It has great potential to promote social inclusion. Yet, many Europeans with a disability still do not have equal opportunities to enjoy the benefits of sport. This includes young people with disabilities. Because many parasport organisations still lack resources and experience to set up the required participation and awareness-raising opportunities to make a change. Objectives The SeeYou project aimed to promote youth parasport participation in South-East Europe by co-creating frameworks for holistic youth parasport camps. With it, we addressed social and economic barriers towards youth parasport participation through fostering exchange of knowledge and by deepening cooperation across the region. This aimed to increase the knowledge base in the field of parasports and to provide both sport coaches and youngsters with improved capacity-building opportunities. Implementation SeeYou consisted of the Croatian, Serbian, Hellenic, and European Paralympic Committees, together with the Rijeka Sport Association for Persons with Disabilities, the Municipality of Gornji Milanovac, and the Ministry of Tourism and Sport (Central State Office for Sport Croatia). They were supported by SPIN Sport Innovation, the Bulgarian Sports for Development Association, and Sport & Citizenship. The consortium implemented 17 development meetings, 3 national and 2 international piloting events Achievements SeeYou co-created a knowledge base to implement Youth Parasport Camps in South-East Europe by developing a Train the Trainer Education Concept and Learning Compendium, Youth Parasport Camp Implementation Guidelines plus Awareness Raising Guidelines, a Training Camp Concept, a Youth Parasport Camp Education Program, and a Cooperation Strategy. The results were deduced from the lessons learnt from 3 national and 2 international youth parasport camps held in Croatia, Serbia, and Greece.