Strong ideas, committed partners and the determination to turn them into impact. This is the recipe behind every winning project. And today we are happy to celebrate a great example of this approach: SportsHeal (Promoting mental wellbeing and social inclusion of young people affected by war, through sport) is a new Erasmus+ Sport Capacity Building project that this month of August has just been awarded funding.
United Nations’s pubblications recognises sport as a tool for social inclusion, resilience and mental wellbeing. However, at policy level, sport in Ukraine continues to be framed predominantly around physical activity and competitive development, while sport policy and practice have traditionally focused on elite performance rather than wider social and health outcomes. For this reason, the project will use sport to support the mental wellbeing, resilience and social inclusion of young people aged 16–30 affected by the war in Ukraine. It will train 50 sport professionals and support 10 Ukrainian sport organisations, but it will also reach at least 500 young people through sport-based psychosocial programmes and peer-support activities, at a grassroots level. SportsHeal aims indeed to contribute to changing this perspective by demonstrating how sport can become a practical tool for psychosocial recovery, inclusion and life skills development, for everyone.
What will SportsHeal achieve
The project has five main objectives:
- Strengthen the capacity of Ukrainian sport organisations to deliver trauma-informed, gender-responsive and inclusive programmes for young people affected by war.
- Increase participation in sport and physical activity, particularly among disadvantaged young people affected by the war.
- Develop positive values and life skills such as leadership, independence, tolerance, teamwork, non-discrimination and gender equality.
- Increase the availability of evidence-based and scalable sport methodologies for psychosocial recovery and skills development, aimed at sport professionals and policymakers.
- Raise awareness of the role sport can play in mental wellbeing, resilience and social inclusion among sport organisations, professionals and young people.
The consortium, composed of EPSI (project coordinator), Symplexis, Kateryna Biloruska Foundation, United by Sport Kyiv Students Football Association and the Ukrainian Badminton Federation, strongly believed in the need to support disadvantaged people trough concrete sports actions to create meaningful impact. For EPSI, SportsHeal also marks an important milestone, as its first Erasmus+ Sport Capacity Building project coordinated by the organisation.
SportsHeal as part of a broader picture
While EPSI and its Project Partners celebrate the achievement of SportsHeal, we are currently waiting for the upcoming Erasmus+ Sport results, expected at the end of August, which will provide further feedback on several proposals involving EPSI members. At the same time, EXACT (Explainable AI for Closed-Loop Adaptive Textile Manufacturing), an Horizon Europe proposal, has successfully reached the second and final phase of its journey towards the grant.
These developments underline the importance of fundraising as a fundamental pillar of the EPSI members’ work. But we know that European funding is becoming increasingly competitive: Getting an idea approved requires time, expertise, strong partnerships and a high level of dedication. Our members continue to demonstrate all of these qualities, developing projects that address real challenges and have the potential to create impact across Europe. In all this, EPSI’s role is to help turn that potential into three things: concreteness, results, impact.
Have a project idea? Don’t wait any longer. Submit your proposal through the MoZ.