As a partner of the Erasmus+-funded project Halting Harassment and Abuse in Sports using Learning Technologies (HALT), the EUSA Institute hosted an informative workshop on the topic on Wednesday, May 26, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

A total of 27 participants attended the workshop, which took place at Ljubljana’s City Hall, organised in adherence to the COVID-19 protocols and social distancing requirements, and supported by the City of Ljubljana.

Five speakers were invited to participate in the event, including Ms Simona Topolinjak, senior advisor at the Department for Health and Social Security at the City of Ljubljana; Ms Katja Zabukovec Kerin, President of the Association for Nonviolent Communication; Mr Rozle Prezelj, Olympian and athlete rights Ombudsman; Mr Ales Solar, Head of Slovenian Olympic Academy and EU projects at the Olympic Committee of Slovenia and Mr Andrej Pisl, event moderator and Communications and Projects Manager at the European University Sports Association and the EUSA Institute.



Discussions in the workshop covered several aspects of harassment and abuse in sport, including psychological violence and emotional abuse, sexual harassment, violence and abuse, and neglect, with specific focus on the situation in Slovenia.



The main conclusion was that the topic of harassment and abuse in sport needs to be further discussed and not considered as a taboo topic, enable an ensure safe environment, with access to support mechanisms, establish and enforce regulations, offer additional training and support to coaches and other sport officials, athletes, their parents as well as others, and use the synergies of networking and exchange of practices and experiences.



The HALT project and tools developed through the transnational project were also presented, namely the Community of Practice Platform, Whistleblowing incident reporting, Serious game with role-play and the video repository.



Please see http://halt.phed.auth.gr for more information about the project, where you can register on the virtual platform and help us evaluate the tools created, contribute by proposing materials, share resources, connect with others and support this important cause.