‘It’s tremendously important to recognize our own responsibility for the future of Europe. In order to face global issues, we have to learn from, collaborate with and support each other,’ summarized the representatives of 8 partner organisations after the official meeting conducted on 20-22 July 2022 in Sofia of a new Erasmus+ Sport project.
Three days of the meeting were filled with various types of sessions where the partners manage to get to know each other and share experience in sport-enhancing and littering prevention activities.
Partners were also introduced to Bulgarian NGOs and eco-movements working in fields of placemaking and littering prevention, community activation and physical activity. The partners from Power Jump (Varna), Safe Playgrounds (Sofia), and Beyond Sport (Sofia) shared with the participants their insights on combining grassroots sports, littering prevention, and community engagement.
Organising #WithoutWaste grassroots sport events, it is crucial to build partnership with a recycling hauler. For the project meeting, BG Be Active invited its national partner EcoPack Bulgaria that has supported cultural and sport events with recycling infrastructure Iva Stefanova presented good practices in Bulgaria, shared challenges in collecting waste and presented the learnings of working with different stakeholders. The national Bulgarian television channel presented by Stasi Tsalova (bTV) joined the meeting to discuss their national campaign “Let’s Clean Bulgaria”.
Throughout the meeting, the partners also discussed the future activities of the project, planned the next steps, and presented each other’s challenges for sustainable practices in grassroots sport in their countries. The partners went into detail on research of the local contexts, behavior-changing strategies and project methodology led by the expert partners from International Sport and Culture Association (Denmark), and Nabolagshager (Norway). As a follow-up to the meeting, the partners will study further their local context, plan pilot interventions for grassroots sport sustainable events, and reflect on advocacy for the project.
The project “Sport #WithoutWaste” overarching objective is to start a #WithoutWaste for leisure and sport movement in the participating countries through the prism of sport, leisure, physical activity, and community involvement, and by using placemaking and tactical urbanism tools, the project seeks to transfer knowledge from BG Be Active and already conducted initiatives in Bulgaria and use it to build the capacity of partnering organizations to coordinate without waste grassroots sporting events.
Sport #WithoutWaste is a movement initiated by BG Be Active and supported by the efforts of the partner organisations from 7 other European countries: International Sport and Culture Association (Denmark), Nabolagshager (Norway), AJSPT Suceava (Romania), Hungarian School Sport Federation (Hungary), Albanian School Sport Federation / FSHSSH (Albania), Association Sport for All Serbia / ASFAS (Serbia), and Envercevko (Turkey).
BG Be Active aspires to transfer, adapt and scale the tested national practices on having cities and events #WithoutWaste from Bulgaria, to the partnering countries with focus on the grassroots sports sector (event organisers, sport clubs, schools etc.). We want to thank again all the partners of the project for being active and contributing to the project discussions.
If you are interested to know how to help us with project implementation, how to take part in our activities or have any questions related to topic, please, don’t hesitate to reach out BG Be Active https://www.bgbeactive.org/
Sport #WithoutWaste is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EACEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.