The Erasmus+ project “Facilitating Inclusion Through Sports” will be conducted in the partnership of 3 secondary schools from Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia. Our project aims at combating exclusion and obstacles our students face, and facilitating inclusion of disadvantaged participants through sports and physical activity, since it has been noted that that participation in sporting activities supports the process of inclusion in many ways: through bringing together individuals from different and various economic backgrounds, offering a sense of belonging to a bigger group, facilitating development of positive social behaviour, improving physical health and mental well-being among young people, as well as increasing community cohesion and active citizenship.
With our project, we intend to help disadvantaged students with overcoming their exclusion through building their self-confidence and social skills, improving their self-development, promoting gender equality. We will promote and develop involvement in physical activity and physical competence among young people through encouraging and supporting students in their participation in sports activities and introducing them to framework of certain sports, learning the skills and strategies for them, as well as promoting involvement in casual or organised participation in sports by creating teams and obtaining results in competitions at all levels.
Also the teachers involved in the project will learn good practices and innovative teaching and learning methods in the area of developing social inclusion with the use of physical education, and therefore will be able to implement them during various educational practices in their schools and extracurricular sporting activities.
The project is designed for a two-year period during which we will cooperate both virtually and personally in order to achieve our objectives. In each partner school we will establish Sports Clubs which will work together using social networks, the internet, project website etc. The students and teachers will also have the opportunity to work together during 4 Learning/Teaching/Training events. During them, the participants will have an opportunity to work on the given subjects and to practice their foreign language and teamwork skills. The students and teachers’ work and studies in the given countries will focus on combating various kinds of exclusion and facilitating inclusion through sports such as rugby, floor hockey (as the first step to ice hockey), break dance and modern dance with elements of cheerleading. During the final LTT a large, international sporting event will be organised which will include tournaments of rugby and floor hockey between mixed international teams, accompanied by cheerleading performances. Spectators from other local schools, educational organizations, local authorities etc. will be invited, in the intermissions sports contests for spectators will be organised.
There will also be 2 transnational project meetings for the coordinators and teachers held during the project duration. They will monitor the general schedule of the project, clarify and supervise the evaluation criteria for the implementation and assessment of the project, its final products and the contribution of the project to the students’ social inclusion. The management team will also overview the course of all activities and the means of project dissemination. The project coordinators together with all the participating teachers will be in charge of the formal course of the project and the rest of tasks is completed by the students.
With our project, we expect the following outcomes:
- a project website with all the information about the project and its results (e.g. lesson plans, posters, instructional videos etc.);
- a Sports Rulebook with chapters devoted to certain sports introduced to students in the project and a multilingual dictionary of vocabulary related to sports in question.
Intangible results of the project will be, among others, acquiring by students personal and interpersonal social skills such as self-confidence, creating relationships with others, communication, motivation, creative thinking, improving their mental well-being and dealing with emotions, developing and improving their physical fitness and knowledge of sports.
Thanks to this international cooperation students be given the opportunity and help to fight obstacles they face and to become socially included. They will obtain cross-cultural awareness and personal experience in the project areas, which will broaden their minds and abilities as well as their communication and language skills. The project will be beneficial not only for the students but also for the teaching staff. They will learn and share good practices, experience and knowledge with their peers from other countries.
Throughout the whole project all the partners will stay in contact, providing each other with help and support.
The aim of our project is combating exclusion and obstacles our students face, and facilitating inclusion of disadvantaged participants through sports and physical activity. The objectives of our project are:
- Helping disadvantaged students with overcoming their exclusion through building their self-confidence and social skills (by becoming a part of a team, forming relationships, enabling competitiveness, achievements and success in various areas and at different levels), improving their mental well‐being and self-development (physical education as a learning process in physical context and as a motivation); promoting gender equality (encouraging both girls and boys to participate in all activities).
- Promoting and developing involvement in physical activity and physical competence: – encouraging and supporting students in their participation in sports activities; introducing them to framework of certain sports (e.g. floor and ice hockey, cheerleading, rugby) and learning the skills and strategies for them; protecting participants from health and safety hazards by improving training and competition conditions.promoting involvement in casual or organised participation in sports by creating teams and clubs and obtaining results in competitions at all levels; improving physical fitness, knowledge of one’s own body and its capacity;
- Building social capital of school and strengthening the profile of teachers – strengthening collaboration with external stakeholders (such as local sports organizations), supporting networking between schools (on international and local level); Teachers involved in the project will learn good practices and innovative teaching and learning methods in the area of developing social inclusion with the use of physical education, and will be able to implement them during their educational practices (e.g. PE lessons) and extracurricular sporting activities.