This project relates primarily to promoting education in and through sport with special focus on skill development, as well supporting the implementation of the EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes. Secondarily it will focus on encouraging social inclusion and equal opportunities in sport. The main goal of this project is to reduce dropout amongst female athletes in talent development programs by using mentoring and role modelling as a tool. Through sharing good/best practices in our organizations and different set ups, we will build the knowledge to support a platform to inspire women to stay in sports. We will investigate how current and former female athletes have dealt with challenges in Dual Career and which competencies they have developed in their Dual Career. Through a positive method of storytelling, inspirational videos and other materials, we will initiate the work of building a platform for women in sports.
The plan is therefore:
To test and assess whether mentoring and role modelling works.
To investigate how we use this in our respective organizations
To pick up good stories from our own athletes
To map the competencies of current and former Dual Career athletes
To initiate the work with a platform for sharing stories and inspire women in sports
To create a corps of former and current athletes to be role models.
The plan is to make three deliverables. One is finding proof that role modelling and mentoring works, two is picking up stories from athletes and mapping the competencies and three is creating a corps of former and current athletes and initiating the platform. In our work with Dual Career, we have experienced an inexpediently large dropout rate from sports, as athletes advance through their education. The dropout rate is particularly notable for girls. We acknowledge that there in elite sports and talent development programs naturally will be dropouts from sports. This can, amongst other things, be due to injury, increased competition, and difficulty in detecting talent at such an early point. Our aim with this project is to strengthen the competency in the environment surrounding the athletes, to reduce dropout caused by affectible factors, such as decreasing motivation, athlete’s perceived inability to manage a Dual Career, and athletes prioritizing a more normal youth, will be reduced.
Gender Equality is among the EU Work Plan for SPort 2021, especially as “Increasing the share of women, especially among coaches and leadership positions in sports organisations and sports clubs”: our project will offer a useful overview on the actual situation of women’s dropouts and offer some useful practices and mutual knowledge to reduce this factor and pushing girls in educational transition phases to aspire for leadership and protagonism in sport.
We aim to investigate and test according to this hypothesis: a collected, coordinated and focused effort to inspire women in sports will reduce the affectible dropout for women in sports. Our effort will in a prioritized order contribute to, that (A) athletes stay in talent development programs,
(B) create opportunities for athletes to fulfil a different role connected to sports – like coach, leader or volunteer, and (C) that athletes continue in sports, however on a lower level of competition. The synergy effect between sport and education must be clearer to the athletes, and the project must in particular contribute to making the transferable value from sport to education clear to athletes. The goal is to transform sports skills into life skills.
All partners in this project have for an extended number of years been working intensively with talent development and Dual Career. Thus, the participating partners share common experience, as are all part of elite sports- and talent development environments. Furthermore, all participants share the perception that dropout is a substantial and common European challenge to the work with Dual career. This project will contribute to increasing the quality of previously tested and successful talent development programs, and aim to provide added value for talent development across Europe. Since February 2020 the pandemic CoVid19 has severely impacted the life of talented sports students in Dual Career programs. Unfortunately in a negative direction. It has resulted in a larger drop out rate in sports in general but also amongst talented athletes. It has furthermore made it more difficult for the athletes to be held in a phase of continuous development. The aftermath of CoVid19 has also shown how especially the girls have struggled with motivational issues and has made it even more difficult to manage both sport and education. It has
made it clear that the challenge for girls in Dual Career programs is more important now than ever.
Another important element to be considered in our needs analysis is the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the entire sports sector: the considerable loss that the pandemic has on the sport sector, as a whole, was connected with a general recognition of the breadth of the sport sector and the resultant need to ensure that all types of organisation are supported and involved, including, grassroots and smaller bodies. As underlined by the recent EC report that mapped the main impacts of the pandemic on sports[1], “France, Italy, Spain, and Austria (where the sector makes up a particularly large part of the overall economy) are also suggested to have substantial decreases.” Considering the pre-pandemic situation of the lower investment in women’s sports and the first attempts and initiatives aimed at reducing this gap that were promoted by some of the major sports leagues and federations, as football, before the harsh impacts of the pandemic on the sector, partners think that it is absolutely important to avoid that these effects could impact negatively on women.
