Partners in the SKILLS project meet for the third time to continue the journey towards a skilled workforce for the sport and physical activity sector in Europe

On the 15^th of July 2021, the partners of the SKILLS project met for the third time to discuss the progress made with the expected project outputs and to plan the next stages in the work plan. The meeting was arranged online due to restrictions related to the pandemic.

The SKILLS project has been funded under the Erasmus+ Sport Chapter for a 24-month period and will run until December 2021. The initiative has been built as a follow-up from the ESSA-Sport project (www.essa-sport.eu) to ensure continuity and to keep the topic of skills development as high priority at the heart of the sector. The overall ambition is to maintain the momentum and build on the progress made during the ESSA-Sport project in the analysis and understanding of the labour market and skill needs of the whole sport and physical activity sector.

The SKILLS initiative has been designed to ensure continuity and maintain the momentum in researching, networking, implementing actions and improving skills in the sport sector in Europe.

In particular, the work programme of the SKILLS project includes to:

• Gather and analyse labour market statistics for the whole year 2019 and 2020
• Monitor the implementation of national strategic action plans from the ESSA-Sport project
• Identify and raise awareness of the realities and trends of the sector in terms of skills needs
• Promote and encourage dialogue and consultation on the topic of skills and workforce development at both the European and antional level

During the meeting, Aurélien Favre from EOSE presented the research material which has been developed and published from the available sport employment statistics for the year 2019 and first semester 2020 which corresponds to the start of the unexpected pandemic. That includes a European Research Report, a European Fact Sheet, and a series of 28 national Fact Sheet presenting the sport labour market situation through visuals and infographic.  

The partners were then able to discuss the next 6-month of the work programme that will include the analysis of latest available statistics on sport employment in Europe and particularly to focus on the key role of national partners to carry out a series of dissemination and consultation activities to present and exchange on the realities, challenges and tendencies of the sport labour market with targeted national stakeholders.

A final meeting will be arranged in October 2021 and at the European level it was confirmed that a European workshop will be organised to gather main European Sport organisations and present them the latest statistics about the sport labour market. This will be an opportunity to discuss the impact of the pandemic on sport employment and exchage on potential solutions and priority actions for the sector to recover from this unexpected situation.

Further information about the SKILLS project: https://projects.eose.org/skills/

  Full list of partners:

• European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE) – Applicant
• Académico Futebol Clube (AFC) – Portugal
• Croatian Association for Sport Management (CASM)
• National Sports Academy “Vassil Levski” (NSA) – Bulgaria
• Sport Malta
• Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) – Belgium.

Contact:      Aurélien Favre – EOSE Executive Director – aurelien.favre@eose.org

                   Ben Gittus – EOSE Director of Standards – ben.gittus@eose.org