Youth Integrity Ambassador Programme (YIAP)
YIAP is a cooperative partnership project, aimed to educate and empower young people, with or without intellectual disabilities, both volunteers and athletes to become sport integrity ambassadors. Through the implementation of this project, young people will be trained to promote positive change in the sports sector, to be the main actors for building a safe environment in the sports sector, making more participatory spaces for young people within it.
Main topics and objectives of the YIAP project will be to develop key competences of young people to take an active roles in their societies by promoting and disseminating a culture of integrity in their sport communities, to take part of an educational program that would serve to equip the youth with the right skills and digital tools, to gather them around the common values as well as to train young people to actively identify, prevent and react against dishonesty and crooked practices within the sport sector and in society at large.
On August 25-26, in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, the kick off meeting of the Youth Integrity Ambassador Program (YIAP) took place, being the first TPM meeting of this project, supported by Erasmus+ programme in the field of youth, focusing on volunteering and good governance.
Bigger portion of the meeting was dedicated to gathering more information about the project results and responsibilities of each partner organization and sharing ideas of best practices and ways of monitoring the evaluation and the learning framework of the project.
On 28 of September in Brussels, during the European Week of Sport, the Youth Integrity Ambassadors Project (YIAP) had its second meeting in Brussels. This meeting served as an opportunity for the Youth and Sport Integrity Expert Committee (YSIEC) to meet and discuss the planned activities and to plan the Training Course in Portugal.
The first activity within the the YIAP project in 2023, was the Training Course in Portugal, on which 36 participants had the chance to participate in a sucessful and educational program with the main goal of giving the skills and knowledge to the young representatives in order to become the future sports integrity ambassadors. All partner organisations had the chance to choose 6 youth representatives and 1 youth worker and give them the opportunity to attend this educational training course and get back home in the local communities with 7 sports integrity ambassadors, ready to share their new gained skills with their peers.
Funded by the Erasmus+ Youth Programme of the European Union, the project will run for a period of 24 months from May 2022 to April 2024. The YIAP project is led by the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO) with ENGSO Youth (SWE) and Swedish Sports Confederation (SWE), partnering with EUSA Institute (SLO), Special Olympics Europe-Eurasia Foundation - SOEE (IRL), RF-SISU Smäland (SWE), Portuguese Sport Confederation (POR), Lithuanian Union Of Sport Federation - LSFS (LTU), Organisation for Sports Education - OPES (ITA).
More information: https://www.engso-education.eu/youth-integrity-ambassadors-programme/