Date/time
Date(s) - 21/09/2019 - 30/09/2019
All day
Locality
Guimarães, Portugalsko
Project type
Selected participants
Summary what was youth exchange about:
Driven by the motivation of the successfully already implemented projects in the field of sports as a method for social inclusion, and strongly committed with the goal of making a better society where we have equity and healthy habits, we developed the Sports Inc. project aimed to spread the message and techniques on how to achieve these subjects and topics. The Sports Inc. project was designed to raise awareness among European youngsters about how sports can be a great tool for inclusion and to fight the bad healthy habits and the growing obesity rates raising in all Europe.
The 2017 Obesity Update from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows up that more than one in two adults and nearly one in six children are overweight or obese in the OECD area. This fact increased the concern of all partners who are committed to fight this new trend and use the sport as a tool to aware the youngsters about the risks and benefits of having a healthier life. Working together with all partners, meeting personally and through internet conferences, we concluded that, day by day, youngsters from all across Europe get more involved in technology and this increasing interest is getting awful and dangerous as they get more sedentary. This sedentary life has a very strong impact in their health and their well-being and in order to fight this increasing obesity rates, we found important to develop a project where we could raise awareness among all the public in general but specially amount youngsters who are very difficult to interact with.
Through non-formal and informal education, with a special attention to youngsters from a fewer opportunities background and young migrants and refugees who has less access to information and are experiencing a challenging transition into a balanced adult life in community, this project brough everyone together, regardless of age, gender or social origin, promoting dialogue, open discussion, debates and knowledge sharing, and creating an environment where they developed solutions and learn from each other.
In parallel with this awareness, we wanted to promote an integration aiming to prevent individualism, discrimination, intolerance and violent radicalisation. Given that the European Week of Sport takes place in the end of September, we developed a 10-days youth exchange, which took place during those dates, where we hope to get deeper into the topic and more easily raise the desired awareness and inspire youngsters to get more involved in sports and in a healthier life. Related to this event we also have the BeInclusive EU Sport Award, in November, which we brought to the topic so youngsters can understand the importance of social inclusion and become proactive actors in integration and inclusion processes of marginalised, disabled and non-disabled people and youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds.
With the support of the local council and institutions we involve the participants and organised a so called prolympic games, adapted for people with disabilities, so they could experience and learn from that experience what are the main difficulties.
Youth exchange was for participants between 17 – 26 years old. Participants were from Portugal 
, Bulgaria
, Hungary 
, Lithuania 
and Slovakia 
. 6 participants from each country.
