The first activity of the WoW Europe project was held on a very beautiful, truly wintery day. As the schools are still closed for learners of grades 5 - 12, and the smalls pupils of grades 1- 4 still are on holidays that started before Christmas already, the project team decided to hold the activity in the open air, which is allowed for the vocational education learners under their sport teachers or coaches.

The activity covered grade 5 learners of both Limbazi General Education Schools - Limbazi State Gymnasium and Limbazi Secondary School, as well as three students of elder classes (grade 8) assisting their coach and our activity's "star" - an athlete, a kayaker, an Olympian Kristaps Zalupe who back in 2008 ranked 7th in the Olympic Games in Beijing covering the discipline of K-2 1000m in sprint kayaking with his partner Krists Straume. Kristaps Zalupe lives in Limbazi and the small town can boast of having its own Olympian who stayed in his native town after his active sports career. Now, Kristaps is a coach in basketball leding his teams among the best youth teams of Latvian basketball. Kristaps teaches sport in a kinder-garden, too, and thus he knows the best approaches towards small children, school children, teenagers and youth.

The activity was held in the town's Skating-rink, which this year is open only for children and youth of vocational oriented education implemented by the local municipal sports school. The Olympian Kristaps Zalupe narrated of his first steps in sport when he himself was of the age of the five-graders. Kristaps mentioned his point of view of doing physical activities on a daily basis and shared his own activities now at the age of 44. Kristaps is cycling in the discipline of mountain bikes and ranks in the top of the best cyclers of grassroots class. Now, in winter, Kristaps does cross-country skiing at least 3 times a week and in the rest of days he either does gymnastics or rides an exercise bike.

Kristaps lead the activity together with the sports teacher of Limbazi State Gymnasium and also a coach of athletics - Agris Kirsis.

After the "official part" our Olympian and the sports teacher took up several skating relays, and Kristaps helped each child by individually explaining how to overcome each obstacle in the relay, which you can well see in the video of the day.

It was a marvellous time for each participant and we are looking forward for holding the next activity in March! And by this video we also want to encourage everyone to keep doing physical activities even in this lock-down situation!

Watch our video HERE!

On Monday morning 18 January, 2021 the main partner of SWoSt project lead its first transnational meeting "Kick-off Meeting", which was supposed to be held in Prato, Italy, online. The project now can be officially considered open. All eleven partners of the project from nine countries are very experienced and strong at their own fields:

• Centro Studi “Cultura Sviluppo” - CSCS (Italy)
• Centro Giovanile di Formazione Sportiva - CGFS (Italy)
• Università di Verona - UNIVR (Italy)
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB (Belgium)
• University of Montenegro (Montenegro)
• Lapland University (Finland)
• Association Gestion Institut Libre d'Education Physique Supérieure - AGILEPS (France)
• University of Belgrade (Serbia)
• Kahrmanmaras Sutcu Imam Universitesi - KSU (Turkay)
• Latvijas Sporta izglītības iestāžu Direktoru padome - LSIIDP (Latvia)
• UEFA Foundation for Children - UEFA (Switzerland)

The overall objective of the Kick-off Meeting was: 1) to clarify project objectives and expectations, 2) to define in details project partner’s roles and activities, and 3) the opportunity for project partners to meet each other, though only online.

The Kick-off Meeting also discussed the implementation of the project, the detailed work plan, the project activities planning and project partner’s organisation and the responsibilities, the deliverables of each partner.

During the meeting the development of the web page was discussed among the partners in order to manage the strategies for the communication tool of the project. Particular attention was paid to administrative and financial rules, as well as to the monitoring and control system of the project, and the reporting forms.

During the Kick-off Meeting the partnership agreement was discussed by project partners in order to clarify in details the partners' roles, activities and obligations. At the same time, the Kick-off Meeting was developing the project monitoring and control system, in order to provide guidance and assistance to the project partners for the correct implementation of the project, in line with the EU administrative and financial rules, as well as reporting obligations.

On the 2nd February Erasmus+ Sports project "BMX - Training to Win" held its first meeting via Google Team platform. The basic project information and description of the main objectives are published HERE.

Agenda of the Meeting No1:


Project consists of seven participants from six countries:
Coordinator BMX School Zaragoza (Spain)
Partner 1 Fundacion Universidad San Jorge (Spain)
Partner 2 Latvijas Sporta izglītības iestāžu Direktoru padome (Latvia)
Partner 3 CEIPES (Italy)
Partner 4 Slovenský Zväz Cyklistiky (Slovakia)
Partner 5 Portuguese Cycling Federation (Portugal)
Partner 6 Malta Street Sport Association (Malta)

LSIIDP is involved in a collaboration partnership of Erasmus+ Sport "Sport without Stereotypes" with the beneficiary from Italy. Priorities of the project are: 1) to combat violence and tackle racism, discrimination and intolerance in sport and 2) encourage social inclusion and equal opportunities in sport. Main task to accomplish within the project life cycle is to design, test and disseminate at European level a set of online tools aimed at providing self-assessment and guidance for sport clubs and sport associations to improve their gender policies and awareness. On the 15th December prior to the official beginning of the project all the partners participated in an online initiating meeting.

Rationale of the Project

In the field of youth sport education the reasons behind the selection of sport activities by the children and young people is often unlinked from a deep evaluation by parents and families about the actual advantages of sport itself. Indeed, the gender-based thinking and the gender stereotypes are usually some of the main criteria that limit the range of sport for males and females. A gender stereotype is a set of preconceived ideas or beliefs, usually negative, over-generalized to all or most members of a group based on their membership in that group. This happens in sport when an activity isn't actually accessible to all people due to differences in terms of gender. Female sport and male sport are subjected to a strong stereotype that increases a false interpretation of the added value of sport.

Besides a widespread awareness concerning the role of sport to tackle the gender issue, there isn’t a significant practical approach in terms of standardized methodology to reduce the risks of gender stereotypes within the European local sport associations and sport educational entities, which should instead transfer the possible good practice to the final beneficiaries (children, young people, parents). Although there are some pilot cases, also financed by EU, it is still crucial to strengthen the sensitization of all stakeholders in order to combine all the positive previous experiences with an aimed standardized approach.

The most of tools and measures, adopted in sport at international and national level until now, focuses on gender equality mainly at top level management or in executive boards and committees of sport governing bodies. Similarly, it’s usually highlight the need of gender balance in the management of professional sport administrations and governing bodies, as well as gender equality in coaching. These measures are a good starting point to guarantee the diffusion of gender equality aspect into the sport, since they act on the “head” of the system; nevertheless an effective change in sport approach by the final beneficiaries is nowadays compulsory as the unavoidable next step of problem’s fighting.

Families, parents, coaches and also young people should be involved into a new bottom up approach oriented to other values than common gender stereotypes behind sport selection. As a matter of fact, it is not so usual that female don’t play some sport activities generally considered “for male only” and vice versa even because the sport association background isn’t ready to welcome untrendy sport request. On the other hand, the ones who would want to pursue different sport experiences are actually the target of homophobia and discrimination, preventing therefore the free selection of sport by young people and their families.

Target Area & Beneficiaries: young people, parents, sport associations, trainers, sport educational entities, schools.

Overall Goal

The main goal of the project is to tackle the gender stereotyping and any discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in sports. The objective of the project is to create whole-sport change in Europe sport associations, that will impact on young people’s expectations of gender roles and challenge gender stereotyping through the creation of a set of online tools aimed at providing self-assessment and guidance for clubs and sport associations to improve their gender policies and awareness. These tools also represent a first approach for the subsequent definition of a “quality label” and a related “charter mark” for organizations that meet minimum standards.

These tools will enable sport association to measure progress in tackling the effects that gender stereotyping still has on athletes, young people and families, in relation with sport practice and clubs sporting choices.

The key approach consists in knowing the existing tools to prevent gender stereotype discrimination in other fields than sport, and to transfer them, after proper fine tuning, in the sport framework.

Specific outcomes are: increasing the participation of male and female in sport typically categorized like “gender based sport”; to underline successful cases; to create a self-assessment tool able to guide sport association through the improving of practical gender equality.

Duration: 36 months 01.01.2021. - 31.12.2023.