European Week of Sport 2021 SportMalta Stakeholders Meeting

The preparatory meeting for the stakeholders of this year’s European Week of Sport was held on the 24^th of August 2021 at the InterContinental, Malta. The Malta Sports Journalists Association was invited together with SportMalta employees from different departments.

SportMalta’s CEO, Mark Cutajar holds that, “Since sports is very important, it can’t only be judged from international results which are obtained in competitions, but from within the community itself”. The European Week of Sport promotes not only sport but also fitness and nutrition and although it only lasts a week, a lot of preparation is done before implementation so that we see the results of this week all year round.  Therefore, the main objective of EWOS 2021 is to lower the percentage of people who do not do sport to 50% or less in comparison to 2018 which was 56%. Together with this objective, the priorities are joy, resilience and intergenerational activities as physical activity needs to be supported more by the community especially post global pandemic.

This year’s focus themes are education, workplace, outdoors, sports clubs, and fitness centers. Education, where all primary and secondary schools will be split in a total of 4 groups and a video will be shown to the students to follow from; workplace, where there will be staff events and programs through sport; outdoors, certain sports activities are better done outdoors and here in Malta the best place for that is the Mediterranean sea; sports clubs, through the main national event and the #BeActive Night, will be provided with a chance to exhibit their potential; also fitness centers, will be the main objective of the #BeActive Night and Local Council activities.

The use of plastic during sports activities has increased to a point where the environment is clearly not being taken care of. For this reason, SportMalta is encouraging all athletes and citizens alike to make a change and start using re-usable bottles which can be re-filled through water fountains and water dispensers found in certain localities.

Social media has taken over some typical traditional media and therefore more emphasis is being made to raise awareness on certain sport activities which will be held, alongside the voluntary work which is highly needed especially for the upcoming Special Olympics being held next year and Games of the Small Nations of Europe 2023.