RYSE project in motion

RYSE project in motion

The EUSA Institute played host to a successful two-day kick-off meeting of Rainbow Youth for Sporting Equality (RYSE), as all partners of the transnational project met for the first time in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

In attendance were representatives from Queer Sport Split in Croatia, project partners from the EUSA Institute as well as the project’s coordinators from LEAP Sports Scotland.

 

 

This ErasmusPlus-funded project will look to improve experiences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) young people in sport, ensuring that sport offers the same opportunities to LGBTIQ+ young people as it does to others.

Moreover, the project hopes to create an inclusive environment that welcomes and shows young people that sport offers them a place – by training the educators, RYSE will look to take a preventative approach and hope that LGBTIQ+ young people are increasingly less likely to become disengaged from sport in the first instance.

 

 

RYSE is aiming to achieve this by working with LGBTIQ+ young people to create a charter of inclusion for youth sport, training educators on the charter to improve their skills in supporting LGBTIQ+ young people before then developing a cross-border training tool that maximises reach and sustainability.

After short introductions at the kick-off meeting, all in attendance then went through the project’s scope and action plan in detail, discussing each step in depth to ensure full understanding of the methodology and action plans, while brainstorming and sharing ideas.

 

 

Each partner organisation was tasked with learning some of the exclusionary experiences that LGBTQI+ people in their specific countries have, finding out what their barriers in sport entail and what can be done to improve this.

A timeline of events was then discussed, as well as the project’s communication strategy and budget before finalising the dates of the project’s next meeting, scheduled to take place in Split, Croatia in September.

 

 

Day two of the meeting involved a pleasant trip to the Slovenian coastline, where the project partners were able to soak in the sights and sounds of the picturesque seaside town of Piran before jetting out to their home countries to carry out the work discussed.