HopaSus as a part of the European Week of Sports

The end of September, more precisely 23rd to 30th of September, is the period when many European countries take an active part in celebrating the European Week of Sports, an event initiated by the European Commission that aims to develop sports and physical activity. During the seven-day event, numerous sports events and challenges, workshops, conferences, active sport village park day, online gymnastic work sessions, employee stars challenges, corporate games and others are held, and our HOPASUS project took part in one of them in Romania. This occasion was used to promote the project to the public, and it was mainly done by the coordinating organization – the University of Physical Education and Sports (Romania), with the assist of the Sports Diagnostic Center Šabac (Serbia). A large and diverse content of activities, i.e. so-called challenges, were designed, which students from several elementary schools from Bucharest successfully coped with. During the workshops 72 small students from 3 schools of Bucharest Romania (Tudor Argezi School – sector 2, 56 Gymnasium School – sector 2 and Saint Mary School for Deaf Children – sector 6) were present in the UNEFS yard to play the Outdoor Ludic Activities of the workshops. In the three panels, children had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with sports such as bocce, pétanque, fencing and relays, rope and darts. Also, the main challenges developed by the team of Sports Diagnostic Center Šabac (Serbia) for the research part of the project were implemented during the workshops. Rope jumping, ball dribbling, ball throwing were some of them, and children fulfilled them with joy and pleasure. The videos and photos taken on the activities will be used as testimonials and pilots for the implementation of the guides and research part of the project development. Just how important these ESW events are, says that the representants from the Sport and Health Ministries, Sport Associations and Federations, Sport Medical Doctors, Sport Psychologists, Nutritionists and Doping Federation, Youth and Education Ministries, teachers and trainers and a large amount of students and volunteers were involved in the activities.   The opportunity was also used to present the official mascot HOPASUS of the project which attracted a lot of attention, especially among the youngest population, and became in a very short time the hero of the games. The European Week of Sports also consists of a large number of media workshops and panels. The round table called “Young and healthy lifestyle” was organized by the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee on September 27, which was another opportunity to present the project. We also shared a live, therefore feel free to watch it here. The dissemination activities did not end there, as Adina Geambasu from UNEFS Romania, the coordinator of Erasmus Sport Project was a guest on Channel 33 where she spoke briefly about HOPASUS. You can find the video here. This was also a good introduction for the next period when we are expected to implement a very important component of the project – research.  

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HopaSus Erasmus Sport Plus project was born out of the need of teachers and youth workers from 4 European countries to develop their digital skills and become more resilient in times of pandemics by using sport video games in their virtual or face-to-face classrooms. The aim of the project is to encourage sport teachers to recognize the potential of video games and sport applications and experiment with new strategies for incorporating them into their gyms and classrooms, and to promote the inclusion of “video games addicted youth” by changing the paradigm of persistent stereotyping of video games as predominantly mindless, violent forms of entertainment, into seeing the potential of video gaming technologies as instructional tools that takes out the children from the desk chair out into the sport field.