The sector targeted by the project is the sports sector. It represents a group of varied activities and services ranging from organised competition within voluntary community clubs, as a means of training and education, to the events put on by professional sportspeople, leisure and tourism pursuits practiced for outdoors or fitness purposes, and the use of sports to boost social integration of population groups in difficult circumstances.
Together, these largely interdependent practices concern over half of European citizens, with nearly a million employees working in the field as their main professional activity (employment has grown by nearly 60% in 10 years) and almost 10 million volunteers throughout the European Union.
The target groups concerned by our project’s proposal are the key stakeholders from the public, private and non-for-profit sector involved in the development of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the sports sector at national and European level. We can list these stakeholders as follows:
− Social partners (employers – EASE - and employees – UNI-EUROPA/UNI-MEI – representatives of the sector at European level).
− Sports public authorities (European Commission “sports Unit”, European Union informal Council of Ministers in charge of sports, E.U.Parliament –Education, Culture and Sports working group-) in relation with education public authorities when needed (E.U. Education Units, Education and training Ministers…);
− The sport movement (The umbrella organisations representing the sports association movements at European level – European Olympic Committees EOC and European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation ENGSO-);
− The sports qualification and training analysts and promoters in relation with the labour market needs (gathered in the European Observatoire of Sports and Employment, EOSE, including National Qualification Authorities such as INCUAL);
− Some sports sub-sectoral pilot organisations in the implementation of the European VET policy (such as European Health and Fitness Association EHFA for the health and fitness sports sub-sector).
− The sports VET providers (both vocational and higher education, through their representative organisation/network, European Network of Sport Science, Education and Employment ENSSEE);
In addition, the key stakeholders in the sport movement have recently formally agreed to work together as a Platform for workforce development in Sport to be known as a “European Sports Workforce Development Alliance” (ESWDA) under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate their coordination in the field of human resources. Expressed by numbers, they are in total 13 organisations at European level, most of them being either partner of the project or in direct relations with some of them. Sports public authorities at European level are supporting and participating to the Alliance activities. The Alliance is a key resource to guaranty the suitability and sustainability of project results.
