The Youth Integrity Ambassadors Programme (YIAP) project was concluded in Malmo, Sweden with two consecutive events: the Evaluation Course and the European Final Conference from  26th to 28th of February, hosted by the Swedish Sports Confederation. 

The young ambassadors of every partner organisation, together with the youth workers and coordinators gathered for two days in Malmo, Sweden in order to evaluate the actions taken within the project, as well as to present and get to know  the results made through the local activities and integrity campaigns from all the partners.

Project results were also wrapped up through the activities taken at the Evaluation Course, such as the finalisation of the document of recommendations for the sports sector.

On the first day of the Evaluation course, the participants had the change to start the event with a short overview and presentation of the local activities that were made in their local communities in: Slovenia, Sweden, Portugal, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, and Italy.

Short recaps, remarks, challenges, and satisfactory factors were discussed among the present representatives of the teams, going into a deeper overview of the impact of the activities, the spread message of integrity, the reach among the local youth and the experience itself.

The second half of the day was spent in discussion in groups based on a few important evaluation questions regarding the local activities in terms of the teams, potential changes, challenges and mostly sharing different aspects from the different experiences that all the teams had in their countries.

The beginning of the second day was reserved for the third and fourth session of the evaluation course which saw the participants working in their local groups, discussing on improvements and tools that can be used to tackle different topics: safeguarding, bad management, match fixing, doping, discrimination and inclusion.

After the working groups managed to settle their proposals and tools, the work continued with active group discussion, as well as sharing examples and best practices of the daily work of the organisations and teams. Fruitful proposals, concrete actions and tools were shared, that will be incorporated in the recommendations as one of the final products of the project.

In the afternoon it was time for the  Final Conference, where among other things, the Toolkit as one of the project results, was brought in the spotlight and presented to the audience.

The Final Conference was kicked off with the welcoming speeches of Stefan Bergh – ENGSO President and Marie Denitton – Swedish Sports Confederation, sharing insights of the past two days, taking great pride in the work of the young ambassadors and the involved organisations on European level on the topic of youth, sport, and integrity.

ENGSO Youth Project and Policy Manager Tiago Guilherme then gave a short overview of the YIAP project, pointing out the results, the steps and actions taken, including two short presentations of the results of the local actions of two partner organisations.

Two insightful and interesting presentations were given from two special guests representing the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society and Swedish Judo Federation. Speaking about youth engagement, youth policies, integrity, working in the sports industry, fair play, integrity and supporting the youth voice in the sport community, the two presentations left a great impact among the present participants.

The final conference was then concluded with two workshops led by two partners of the project: the European University Sports Association (EUSA) and OPES Italy.

The topic covered with the workshop done by EUSA Communications Officer – Kiki Hristova, covered the topics of communication campaigns, youth engagement in sport and integrity in one.  Within the workshop the participants had the chance to create a vision board of personal goals related to more inclusive and fair sport community, as well as tools how to reach more youth engagement and to create better and more open sport opportunities for all. The participants also had the chance to have short discussion on scenario-based situations, trying to use their voices, ideas, and tools to resolve a given problem within the scenario.

In the other workshop, the participants had the opportunity to be part of a game called walk of privilege, putting the people in different situations, backgrounds, societal categories and with that trying to evaluate their position, the feelings - raising productive discussion related to inclusion, discrimination, integration, similarities, and differences.

On the 28th, while the coordinators went for the last partners meeting, the rest of the participants went to visit the biggest para sports club in Sweden, where they had the chance to participate in friendly matches in wheelchair basketball and blind football. 

At the final event of the YIAP project, EUSA was represented by Kiki Hristova as the youth worker and the three young ambassadors Cristina Kenely, Pol Arnan and Kinga Gall.

Funded by the Erasmus+ Youth Programme of the European Union, the project run for period of 24 months from May 2022 to April 2024. The YIAP project is led by the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation (ENGSO) with ENGSO Youth (SWE) and Swedish Sports Confederation (SWE), partnering with EUSA Institute (SLO), Special Olympics Europe-Eurasia Foundation - SOEE (IRL), RF-SISU Smäland (SWE), Portuguese Sport Confederation (POR), Lithuanian Union Of Sport Federation - LSFS (LTU), Organisation for Sports Education - OPES (ITA) and associating partners The European Lotteries.