Last weekend on January 29 and 30, Mrs Jackie Newton and Mr Evandros Votsis represented EUSA in Nicosia, Cyprus, at the coaches mentor education training, part of the SCORE project, aiming to raise gender equality in coaching. The programme will equip 22 trainers across Europe to actively contribute towards this aim.

In recognition of the issues faced by female coaches, particularly at the higher levels of coaching, the aim of the weekend was to allow coaches to build a strong network of coaches, plan how to strengthen and support female coaches and their well being and plan how to increase the number of female coaches.



The mentor training was delivered by Mrs Satu Kaski, Sport Psychologist, who facilitated discussion around the issues that face female coaches, ideas for breaking down existing barriers and strategies to support the coaches. Mentoring was identified as a useful way of providing opportunities for issue setting and generating solutions and much of the weekend looked at the various tools that could be used during mentoring sessions.



These discussions were interspersed with small group practice sessions where groups of four took turns to practise mentoring each other and try out the various strategies that had been presented. This was then followed with the groups coming together to discuss the skills and behaviours of both mentors and mentees so that, by the end of the day, a profile of what a mentor may do and be was created along with our thoughts of how a mentee would benefit.



The weekend was hosted by Cyprus Sports Organisation who welcomed the group with excellent hospitality and, after a long day of thinking and discussing, treated the participants to a traditional dinner and dancing.

Strengthening Coaching with the Objective to Raise Equality - SCORE is a 2-year project, co-funded by the EU Erasmus+ Sport programme within strategic partnerships. EUSA activities are partially also supported by the International University Sports Federation (FISU). The project is run by the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO), and partners include the European University Sports Association (EUSA), International Council of Coaching Excellence (ICCE), European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), Sport and Citizenship, Sport Coach UK, Finnish Coaches Association, German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), Swedish Sports Confederation (RF), National Olympic Committee of Croatia (NOC Croatia), Lithuanian Union of Sports Federations (LUSF), Cyprus Sports Organisation (CSO) and Portuguese Sports Confederation (CDP).

For more information, please see www.score-coaching.eu.