Foreword

Amateur sport can foster social change and inclusivity among children, youngsters and their parents. Indeed, a sports club is a good place for instructors and volunteers, notably parents, to carry out educational activities with young practitioners. Parents in particular are often closely involved in their child's club. Because amateur sport is accessible to all and clubs have a local ‘clientele’, it can play an educational role with sports lovers, the public and volunteers, notably parents. At the local level, it can be a precious tool to enhance social cohesion, prevent crime and violence, and teach values of tolerance, equality, diversity and respect. Thus, when local authorities work side by side with amateur clubs or associations, sport really becomes a useful prevention tool that can easily be applied to a whole territory, whether in large cities or small towns. However, issues of violence and specifically discriminatory violence hinder the beneficial impact of amateur sport and need to be tackled. Even if sports federations and clubs are aware of these issues and take action to suppress or prevent them, they often struggle to address the problem in a holistic and consistent manner, and in cooperation with all the relevant actors.

Efus designed and led the MATCH-SPORT project, with the help of the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, to support local authorities and sports organisations in working together on reducing violence, discrimination, racism and intolerance in amateur sport through the exchange of expertise and practices. The main goals of the project were to develop or strengthen programmes to counter and prevent violence in amateur sport, to help local authorities increase their knowledge on violence and prevention strategies, and to empower local partners by providing them with suitable and adequate tools to respond with an integrated, multi-sectoral approach.

MATCH-SPORT follows previous European projects developed and led by Efus, on the one hand to use sport as a tool to foster social inclusion, and on the other hand to prevent discrimination. Efus has been working for decades on these issues, including recently through the SPORT+ project for social integration through sport, and the JUST (“Just and Safer Cities for All”) project on the role of local and regional authorities in preventing discriminatory violence. This publication presents the project’s main outcomes, i.e. a pan-European survey of discrimination in amateur sport and prevention measures taken at the national, regional and local level; promising practices introduced locally throughout Europe; the communication campaign created by the project, which is available to all local and regional authorities that are members of Efus; and the training programme designed and implemented by the project for local authorities and sports stakeholders. We hope it will be of interest to you and inspire you to either renew or broaden your existing schemes or initiate new ones. And we encourage you to share these practices with Efus, as they can inspire other local and regional authorities throughout Europe.

Elizabeth Johnston Efus Executive Director