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INTRODUCTION

SportBoard is an intersectoral project initiative, aiming to improve good governance of grassroots sport organizations and governing bodies by proposing a holistic approach towards monitoring and managing ethics behaviour of child and young athletes. It combines theoretical knowledge and practical experience of five entities:

• Sant Cugat Creix (SCC), non-for-profit association that joins grassroots sports organizations (Spain),

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• Sport club Anderlini (Anderlini), grassroots sports organization (Italy),

• Municipality of Modena (Modena), sports governing body (Italy),

• Faculty of Psychology and Education and Sports Sciences of University of

• Ramon Llull University (URL), (Spain)

• Think tank “Sport and citizenship” (S&C), (France).

The project is a follow-up initiative of successful implementation of Erasmus Plus Sport Collaborative Partnership “Ethics for Sport” (E4S)1 that was aimed at development of innovative mechanisms to promote Codes of Ethics in grassroots sports and ensure its effective enforcement. The project activities were focused on the development of Codes of Ethic and digital tools for registration of its implementation via an innovative App. After the project ended some project partners (SCC and Anderlini) came up with the idea to go further with the development of innovative mechanisms of monitoring and managing athletes’ ethics behaviour in sport for providing good governance in sport. In this regard, the SportBoard initiative will directly contribute to the Sport sector specific priority “Improving good governance in sport”.

Project partners understand good governance in sport in accordance with the definition, given by EC Expert Group on good governance (2013): “The framework and culture within which a sports body sets policy, delivers its strategic objectives, engages with stakeholders, monitors performance, evaluates and manages risk and reports to its constituents on its activities and progress including the delivery of effective, sustainable and proportionate sports policy and regulation”.

The SportBoard project intends to develop and test a holistic approach towards good governance for grassroots sport organizations and governing bodies based on monitoring, evaluation and management of athletes’ ethics behaviour. Good governance will be ba- sed on a systemic work of definition of ethics behaviour indicators, their registration, monitoring and management for providing efficient self-regulation of grass-roots sport organizations. SportBoard behaviour indicators will be organised around at least the 6 following categories of behaviour: (1) harassment & bullying; (2) discrimination, whether it be based on origin, colour, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation; (3) doping; (4) abuse, including sexual abuse; and (5) violence, (6) match fixing.

These categories of behaviours were chosen on one hand because they can be significant barriers for sport as a positive social practice and a tool for community cohesion2 and on the hand sport practice itself can contribute to combat these types of behaviours by enforcing positive values and managing ethical behavior.

SportBoard holistic approach revolves around two pillars that sustain the logic of the project. The first pillar is the monitoring of ethical / non-ethical behaviours in the field of sport, and the second one is its management and the elaboration of recommendations for providing good governance.

As stated by the Council of Europe in the Guidelines on sport integrity, “only recently has there been a trend to widen the scope of sport integrity to include the good governance of sports organisations” despite good governance being a “pivotal issue without which no other integrity issue will be properly solved”. SportBoard contributes to the priority on promoting integrity and values in sport in different ways:

• One one hand, the project helps to promote the positive values of sport through the monitoring and management of ethical / non-ethical athletes’ behaviours.

• On the other hand, it focuses on improving good governance by providing sport governing bodies with recommendations as well as genuine and accurate data on ethics in sport, so that they can tailor their policies to the real needs of sport organisations in the field.

SportBoard has been structured in 4 different WPs, namely:

• WP1 - Project Management (SANT CUGAT CREIX)

• WP2 - Design of pilot programme methodology and digital tools (URL)

• WP3 - Implementation and evaluation of pilot programme (MODENA)

• WP4 - Communication and dissemination (ANDERLINI)

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