Athletes 4 Society

EMPOWERING THE PUBLIC VALUE OF SPORT THROUGH ATHLETES AS ROLE MODELS

PROJECT SUMMARY

For the first time in its history SPLISS will be the main coordinator of a significant European Project supported by the EU commission for 400k euros.

Effectively empowering the public value of sport through athletes as role models requires an international, multi-agency approach. This project joins a unique group of European stakeholders – universities and both private stakeholders and public sport organisations. This unique combination will enable us to propose a unified approach in guiding sport organisation across Europe in scaling up their athlete role model initiatives linked to sport public value. The EU Commission focuses heavily on the principles of fair play. A preliminary investigation of a number of athlete role model programmes and policies revealed that some programmes are also targeting fair play, discrimination, combatting violence or address other relevant threats to the integrity of sport. As such, by taking a bottom-up approach, the ATHLETES 4 SOCIETY project contributes to the EU commission sport policy objectives. The objective of the ATHLETES 4 SOCIETY project is to inspire, support and stimulate sports organisations to increase the public value of sport. Specifically, by empowering sport organisations to develop policies, campaigns or programmes that successfully put athletes to good use towards positive societal impact. Hence, the running title of the project: “Empowering the Public Value of Sport through Athletes as Role Models”.