Partners

International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA)

ISCA is a democratic, non-governmental and not-for-profit umbrella association with 240 member organisations worldwide. It was established in 1995 and has experienced sustained growth in membership and in turnover to a level of 2 million Euros annually. ISCA has 14 staff members from 11 countries today, most of which are based in its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. ISCA’s tag line is MOVING PEOPLE. This means we are delivering capacity building and promoting cross-sector collaboration to ultimately increase citizens’ involvement in sport and physical activity. ISCA aims to promote an understanding between people across borders through sports and cultural activities, stress the view of sport as a bearer of local, regional or national cultural identity, and encourage the broadest possible participation in sporting and cultural activities among all affiliated members. ISCA has successfully implemented more than 63 EU-funded projects over the last 20 years and has rolled out the NowWeMOVE campaign on three continents (Europe, Latin America and Asia).

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Unione Italiana Sport per Tutti (UISP), Italy

UISP is a national association founded in 1948. UISP is formally recognised by the Italian Olympic Committee as Sport Promotion Association, by the Italian Ministry of Interior as social assistance body and it is inscribed in the Italian Welfare Ministry’s official list of Italian social promotion organisations. UISP’s organisational structure includes a National Headquarters for political guidance, coordination of thematic areas, coordination of projects, 5 thematic areas, for research and counselling on specific topics related to sport, 20 regional committees and 164 local committees for the realisation of activities and projects at the local level, and participation in the national ones: 26 national sports leagues, for the promotion of sports practice at national level, methodological research, competitive sports activities; 18,000 associated sports clubs, for the organisation of sport activities in their facilities and structures and a total number of about 1,330,000 individual members.

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Unio Barcelonina d'Associacions Esportives (UBAE), Spain

UBAE (with a brand name Eurofitness) is a leading promoter and provider of sport and fitness in Catalonia and beyond, implementing activities in the rest of Spain and in other European countries. It is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation established in the 1980s to address the lack of resources and activities provided by the Municipality of Barcelona to encourage people to take up sport and physical activity. In the beginning, the activities organised were focused on primary schools where no sporting activities were offered after the lessons. In the late 1980s the leaders of these initiatives decided to join forces in a common movement. It was called UBAE. The target group was not only children and youth, but also adults and elderly people. UBAE is an umbrella organisation with 21 members and 400 employees, most of them youth leaders. It has also created a brand called Eurofitness. UBAE currently operates 13 facilities that are used for sport and physical activity.

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Think Tank Sport and Citizenship

Sport and Citizenship has been committed since its very beginning to European civic dialogue in the field of sport thanks to multidisciplinary and transverse reflections aiming at putting European sport stakeholders in relation with each other: governments, sport movement, as well as civil society, academics and the private sector. Sport and Citizenship is an apolitical and independent platform for new thinking on the role of sport, publishing a quarterly scientific journal every three months on topics related to sport. As such, Sport and Citizenship is recognised as a privileged interlocutor by the European institutions, the sport movement and sport stakeholders in general at European and international levels. Sport and Citizenship coordinates 6 European thematic networks on Sport and Health, Sport and Education, Sport and Disabilities, Women and Sport, Sport and Innovation and Sport and Volunteering and these networks echo the diversity and the complexity of the governance of European sports.

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SESC, Social Service of Commerce, Brazil

SESC’s actions are the result of a solid cultural and educational approach which, ever since the institution’s founding in 1946 by the commerce and service sector in Brazil, has led to innovation and social transformation. SESC, as a quasi-public institution, aims at promoting social welfare, enhancing quality of life and facilitating physical and cultural development of commerce and service employees, serving all segments of the public, but with an increasing focus on youth and sport. In São Paulo alone, SESC has a network of 32 branches, most of which are cultural and sports centres. It also offers activities in social tourism, health programmes, environmental education and special programmes for targeted age groups. SESC is running the Move Brasil campaign, along with YMCA Brazil, Athletes for Citizenship, Olympic Public Authority (APO), the Ministry of Sports and the Ministry of Health – all of whom are committed to joining forces to increase the number of Brazilians taking part in sport and physical activity.

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French Institute for International and Strategic Studies (IRIS)

Established in 1991, IRIS is a leading European independent institute on geopolitica l and strategic issues. It is acknowledged as a centre of expertise in the sports field and the associated governance issues. It is contributing to the research and the debates around strategic and international issues by offering a different and original analysis of national and international issues. The institute also specialises in sports integrity and sports governance, nationally and internationally with a White Paper called “Sports betting and corruption: how to preserve the integrity of sports”; a study programme on “The strategies of sports diplomacy as new influence tools for the States”; an EU Commission programme “What National Network to Fight Against Match Fixing”; an EU Commission programme (Precrimbet) assisting EU national authorities in fighting against criminal risks linked to the sports betting market; and IRIS is a member of the Permanent Consultative Council (PCC) of the Intergovernmental Committee for Physical Activities and Sport (CIGEPS) of UNESCO.

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European Observatory of Sport and Employment (EOSE)

EOSE is a European, independent, not-for-profit association founded in France in 2002. Its scope covers the whole sport and active leisure sector, from competitive and professional sport to community grassroots sport and recreation, and embraces the growing commercial activities of the outdoor and fitness sub-sectors. EOSE acts at the European level with the goal of serving as a source of knowledge and a strategic facilitator of the development of sport and active leisure, including employment, sports systems, developing standards, competence, qualifications and Vocational Education and Training (VET). EOSE’s Mission is to facilitate and support the development of the sport and active leisure sector workforce, in bridging the gap between education and employment, to ensure people working and volunteering in the sector have the right skills to perform and enable their sector to fulfil its potential as a social, health and economic driver.

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National Olympic Committee and Sport Confederation of Denmark (DIF)

DIF is the main organisation for 61 national federations and has more than 1.9 million members distributed among 9,082 associations (2016) in Denmark. DIF assists the national federation in developing their activities and their support to local sports associations. In addition to being responsible for both elite and amateur-level/recreational sports at association level, DIF is also responsible for Danish participation in the Olympic Games. DIF is an umbrella organisation and handles the tasks of the sports associations, which safeguard the interests of the athletes. DIF works on a wide area of tasks with initiatives and projects covering all sides of elite and amateur sports. DIF has an extensive international strategy since 2015, which among other things outlines its vision to enhance participation in sport and physical activity world-wide. The strategy underlines the chances for Denmark to obtain a leading position in this area, given its high rates of participation, volunteering, and dynamic civil society, exporting this expertise.

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Portuguese Institute for Sport and Youth

The Portuguese Institute for Sport and Youth (IPDJ) is the Portuguese public body organisation responsible for supporting the definition, execution and evaluation of the public policy of sport and youth. In addition, IPDJ has the mission to promote the generalisation of sport, support regular physical activity and sport practice and develop high-performance sports through technical, human and financial resources. Furthermore, the preservation of ethics in sport is also one of the essential scopes of the organisation. Working in close cooperation with Portuguese knowledge centres and scientific experts, IPDJ has a vast experience in developing specific adjusted policies supported both by the EU Physical Activity Guidelines and a national monitoring system. IPDJ has an extensive international network and is active in international sport development work. Working with other EU Member States in the context of e.g. the HEPA Focal Points network, IPDJ is currently developing a project streamlining measurement systems for sport and physical activity.

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National School, University and Leisure Sport Federation (NSULF), Hungary

The National School, University and Leisure Sport Federation was established as an autonomous body in December 2016, by the amendment of the act on Sport, as part of the new non-governmental system in sport. Since then, there are four umbrella organisations with public tasks in the field of sport in Hungary: Hungarian Olympic Committee – dealing with Olympic sports; Hungarian Competitive Sport Federation – dealing with non-Olympic sports; Hungarian Paralympic Committee – dealing with Paralympic sport; National School, University and Leisure Sport Federation – dealing with, school, university sport and sport for all, main focus on grassroots sport and HEPA. NSULF has three founding member organisations: Hungarian School Sport Federation, Hungarian University Sports Federation and Hungarian Leisure Sport Federation. The focus of the Federation is on grassroots sport and HEPA, the main objective is promoting sport (mainly grassroots sport), physical activity and healthy lifestyle, and representing the member organisations in internal and external relationships.

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