The Oltalom Sport Association, together with the Budapest Association for International Sports (BAIS), hosted a successful two-day SK4YS kick-off meeting in Hungary’s capital city Budapest, where the six partners present mapped the way forward for the two-year initiative on skills development in sport.

SK4YS – Skills for You(th) through Sport – is a transnational initiative of European sport, youth organisations and educational institutions funded by European Union programme Erasmus+, with the aim to raise awareness of soft skills and competences learnt through sport and implement them through sport-based employment programmes.



The two-year initiative, which targets young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and those not in employment or training, focuses on a cross-sector approach of sport, youth, employment and education policies. The project will look to empower sport, youth and educational institutions by developing and delivering sport-based employability programmes for young people through the collection, classification and promotion of European good practices, made available through an educational handbook.



Coordinated by youth section of the European Non-Governmental Sport Organisation - ENGSO Youth, the kick-off meeting was also attended by the project’s partners European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), the Cyprus Youth Council and the European University Sports Association through its EUSA Institute. EUSA was represented by the Communications and Projects Manager Mr Andrej Pisl, Communications Officer Mr Fabio De Dominicis, EVS/ESC volunteer Mr Kieran Slocum and Student Commission Chair Ms Anna Edes.



Discussions at the meeting included input and shared experiences from the organising partners, expectations and contributions of the project before outlining the initiative’s three phases.



The preparation phase will identify and share European good practices across various organisations, which will be followed by the implementation phase where the content will be developed and collated in a handbook, set to be finalised by July 2020. The final closing and dissemination phase will aim to introduce the project’s outcomes to the public, reaching in particularly the European grassroots sports sector through awareness activities, advocacy work and training programmes.



Participants present at the kick-off meeting were also taken to the Treasure of John Wesley Primary School just outside Budapest to play a small-sided football match with children from disadvantaged backgrounds, some of them also with special needs.



The meeting gave participants the opportunity to meet new partners from different organisations while also strengthening existing relationships, with each participant hailing the meeting as a success after leaving Budapest with a detailed action plan ahead of SK4YS’s next meeting in Cyprus in September.