This Saturday, September 19th, Tea Gutović, a member of the Sport2life Croatia team, participated in the presentation of the results of the European Erasmus + project SAVE – Sport Against Violence and Exclusion. SAVE Youth Sport Event was organized on the football fields in Split as a part of the final activities of the project. After a friendly match between children’s football teams, Tea, as one of the researchers on the project, presented the activities and results of the project to the coaches, parents and children present.
SAVE is a project designed and implemented by a team from seven European educational and sports institutions. The aim of the project was to define the competencies needed to anticipate, avoid and end violence, social exclusion and intolerance through sport along with the development of curricula in universities and lifelong learning programs that should build the capacity of sports education institutions to effectively manage conflict resolution tools.
Research conducted as part of the project among primary school children (age 7-14) showed that children who play sports show a greater tendency to prosocial behavior and the development of cohesion. Likewise, in all seven countries where the survey was conducted, the occurrence of violence and social exclusion among children in sports clubs proved to be very rare. Results indicate that children who play sports are more inclined to a positive approach and good coping mechanism in situations of violence and social exclusion than primary school children are. The project also conducted research among coaches and included them in a pilot training and education about solving the problem of violence and social exclusion in sports teams. The final product of the project is the SAVE Training Kit, a textbook intended for coaches and other sports professionals interested in additional knowledge and skills in solving the problem of violence and social exclusion in sports.