Project news

#SportDiplomacyAcademy presented to 340 athletes from 43 countries

Eurasia Bulgarian Open Badminton Championships 2019 is the biggest international badminton competition held in Bulgaria. The competition is an Olympic qualification for Tokyo 2020 and has a prize pool of $ 10,000. Top competitors from Europe and the world, as well as Bulgarian stars such as Maria Delcheva, Maria Mitsova, Ivan Panev, Ivan Rusev, Stilian Makarski, Daniel Nikolov, took part in this competition. Peyo Boychinov, Alex Vlaar and others. The international sporting event, which is being held at the Badminton Hall Europe, was attended by 340 competitors from 43 countries, taking place until 15 August 2019 and the event is open to citizens free of charge.

During the tournament, athletes and sports executives had the opportunity to get acquainted with the activities under the project Sports Diplomacy Academy, its activities provoked strong interest and support was expressed for their realization. Sport specialists and coaches from different countries shared that the project implementation is timely and very necessary for the sports sector.

Sport Diplomacy Academy SDA project is legacy of recent First Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU 2018 and will focus on Western Balkans lot as a logical follow up of all implemented #EU2018BG Main activities: prioritizing the EU perspective and connectivity of the WB, referring to the SofiaDeclaration and Sofia Priority Agenda. Both #EU and WB partners should continue to invest efforts in strengthening the cooperation and good practices exchange, focused on democracy, security and fundamental rights.

Project will ensure the educational mobility of coaches and other staff of sport organisations (incl. volunteers) linked to professional and grassroots sport. The 4 modules of mobility, held in each one of the partners countries with the same group of participants from the project target group will improve their competences as well as their qualifications and acquire new skills through learning mobility and spending a period of time in a foreign country (in and outside of the EU). Learning mobility will be planned as an investment in human capital and a contribution to the capacity building of various sport organisations with clear focus on building a network of well-trained sport diplomats.

After the implemented project mobilities, each of the partner countries will possess with at least 20 well trained “diplomats in sport suits” with great skills and knowledge in the field of sport diplomacy (policy dialogue and international relationship, campaign creation, successful communication (verbal & non-verbal), public speaking, media relationships, protocol and etiquette, EU foreign policy and values). The network that project will create (4 countries-20 people each) will focus on supporting and developing EU integration of WB in the field of sport and will be quality provider of EU values in their local environment. For the delivery of the modules will be recruited the best EU experts in each field and in the agenda will be planned quality space for NFE activities and good practices exchange.

Project will involve 4 partners-3 EU (Applicant – Bulgarian sports development association /BSDA/, Croatian sport umbrella organization – Rijeka sport association, ENDAS - Italian grassroots sport organization) and 1 WB (BRAVO - Bosnian Youth and sport NGO). Partners has worked together for several years already, implementing different scale of projects and cooperating in different frameworks.