On 28 and 29 of September, in Brussels, during the European Week of Sport, the Youth Integrity Ambassadors Project (YIAP) had its second meeting in Brussels. This meeting served as an opportunity for the Youth and Sport Integrity Expert Committee (YSIEC) to meet and discuss the planned activities.

The YSIEC includes one youth expert and one young representative from each partner organisation. As part of this Sport Integrity Expert Committee, EUSA was represented by Ms Hristina Hristova, in the role of youth expert and Mr Jan Martin Jamnik in the role of youth representative. The goal of the committee is to prepare the training course for the young participants that will later enrol in the YIAP programme.

During the meeting, the committee focused on identifying the key competences and knowledge to equip young integrity ambassador, create an educational curriculum to empower young people, by using non-formal education methods and building a network of young individuals connected through Europe.  YIAP aims, at implementing a Training Course that could give to 36 young participants the competences and the tools to be Integrity Ambassadors in Sport. The curriculum will be needed both for the training course and the toolkit the project partners will produce. 

The program of this first day of meeting was  then was continued with a fruitful brainstorming on important topics that should take part on the program and to be developed into particular sessions, leaded by the representatives of the Committee or other experts and wrapped up by a session on the criteria of choosing the candidates for Youth Integrity, which will help the members of this Committee to select the group of young people that will accompany them in Portugal.

On 29 of September, the members of the YSIEC had the chance to participate in a #Beactive for Integrity event, organised by ENGSO and ENGSO Youth in collaboration with European Lotteries. The introduction and welcoming speeches were given by Mr Alvise Angelini, Senior Policy Officer & Sport Secretary, for European Lotteries and Ms Sara Massini, Secretary General of ENGSO.

During the dedicated seminar “#BeActive for Sport Integrity”  inspiring speakers  highlighted the importance of youth, inclusion and integrity. Among them were, the keynote speaker, Mr Paul Standaert, Secretary, Panathlon International EU Brussels and Board member, Belgian Gymnastics, Ms Ugnė Chmeliauskaitė, Chair of ENGSO Youth, and member/athlete of the Lithuanian National team field hockey, Mr Olivier Alsteens, COO, Loterie Nationale Loterij, Belgium and Ms Jenni Hakkinen, Project manager of Special Olympics Europe Eurasia.

On behalf of the European University Sports Association, Ms Hristina Hristova, Communications Officer, highlighted the importance of sport integrity within university sport and the promotion of fairness and fair play in sport competitions, access to sport, anti-doping programs as well as engagement of youth being one of the main objectives in the work of EUSA. 

These two days of active and productive work on the topic of Integrity were wrapped up with a short #BEACTIVE yoga session and the statement that sharing the same core values of responsibility, sustainability and integrity, we will build up towards a strong integrity culture within sport. 

Funded by the Erasmus+ Youth Programme of the European Union, the project will run for a 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.

For more information please see https://www.engso.eu/news and https://www.european-lotteries.org/news/beactive-el-engso-2022