Led by ISCA, the partners are Youth Sport Trust International (UK), Sports Union of Slovenia, BG Be Active (Bulgaria), Deporte Para La Educacion Y La Salud (DES) (Spain), Stichting Hanzehogeschool Groningen (Hanze) (the Netherlands) and Azur Sport Sante (France).

Over the course of the two-year Erasmus+ Sport Collaborative Partnership, the partners will identify, recruit, train and support a cohort of experienced practitioners who will facilitate local-scale collaboration projects between young people and older people to increase their participation in physical activity and sport. 

These actions will be delivered as five pilots (in Bulgaria, France, Slovenia, Spain and the UK), which will involve selecting and training the practitioners (face-to-face and online) before they facilitate the interaction between young people and older people to co-design and deliver 60-minute physical activity sessions over a period of 8 weeks. The outcomes of the pilots will be turned into a sustainable GUS programme model that will be fine-tuned based on feedback from surveys conducted before-during and after the pilots. 

An e-learning course will be developed to help roll out the model further and will be made available for all EU-countries and beyond at the conclusion of the project at an international conference.

As a result, the GUS project will promote health-enhancing physical activity among two key demographic groups: 

• Older people (defined as those 65 years old and over for the purpose of this project) whose participation in physical activity and sport tends to decline as they age
• Young people (for the purpose of this project defined as those 24 years and younger), whose life long physical activity habits are in their formative stage.

“We’re really excited about this because of the impact Active Across Ages is already having and because staying physically active is important for older people in terms of staying in their own homes.” Helen Vost, Managing Director of Youth Sport Trust International and ISCA Vice President said at the kick-off.

For more information please see https://www.isca.org/news