In October the Towards an EU Sport Diplomacy (TES-D) project made an open call for five pilot projects or initiatives in sport diplomacy that will be implemented in 2022 and co-funded by the project. The TES-D partners received 44 applications and have now selected the final five from a shortlist of 14 initiatives.

The selected pilots will be led by organisations based in Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Italy and will enter into a coordination agreement with project partner the International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA). All of these initiatives are set to start after 1 January 2022 and finish before 30 October 2022. The maximum financial contribution from the TES-D project is €5000. One leader of each selected initiative is invited to attend the MOVE Congress from 17-19 November 2021 in Brussels, and in particular the Sport Diplomacy workshops on 18 November.

5 Selected TES-D Pilot Projects

Pilot 1
UISP APS Roma, Italy
The objective of this pilot action is to facilitate interaction through sport for all and public events and thereby create a basis for dialogue in the city of Rome and specifically in the Pietralata district. This complex local context is experiencing many socially critical situations. The proposed sports diplomatic action will be accompanied by awareness-raising activities such as an exhibition on racism in sport and a round table involving all stakeholders and local authorities in the district to discuss how sport for all can be used as a tool to fight all forms of discrimination. This is a formula that has been tested and seems to be useful to create a more suitable climate for people to better understand each other.

Pilot 2
DGI National Danish Performance Team (NDPT), Denmark
National Danish Performance Team’s (NDPT) mission is to contribute to and encourage exercise, cheerfulness and understanding in the world. Through their shows and workshops they entertain and inspire people to take up an active lifestyle and live a healthy lifestyle. The team seeks and provides challenges to enhance skills and self-empowerment and build communities to achieve cultural and human understanding as ambassadors of an inclusive, democratic and dynamic sports culture. In 2022 through the pilot the team is expected to perform more than 100 workshops and 75+ shows, reaching 30,000+ spectators and kids, youth, trainers, teachers and adults at workshop programme and outreach activities.

Pilot 3
FC Internationale Berlin 1980 e.V, Germany
This pilot project envisages a collaboration between civil society (non-professional sports club FC Internationale Berlin 1980 e.V), a disability sports organisation (Special Olympics Germany) and a sheltered workshop (Berliner Werkstätten für Menschen mit Behinderung GmbH) to provide a best practice and replicable model to a local community on how to integrate people with ID in and through sports. This collaboration will result in an inclusive trial day in football and the build-up of a regular sports offer for people with ID at the local facilities of FC Internationale. In terms of legacy and scalability, the project aims at delivering a practitioner’s guide on how to encourage and promote effective civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships between the sports and the development sector at a local level.

Pilot 4
ITTF Foundation, Germany
This pilot will encourage mass celebrations of table tennis for ping pong diplomacy (GPPD) initiatives across continents. It will promote diversity and best practice examples by selecting and supporting 5 promoters per continent to deliver role model examples. It will also aim to raise awareness about ping pong diplomacy as an accessible tool for all and underline its ability to be used as a tool for advocating the UN’s SDG 16 – peace, justice, and strong institutions, and raise awareness and knowledge of GPPD in the lead-up to and post-World Table Tennis Day (WTTD).

Pilot 5
University of Physical Education, Hungary
Soft Skills for Soft Diplomacy is a pilot project aimed at exploring specific methods of how to enable professional athletes to develop skills that may help them act in various diplomatic roles and relations during their active sporting career as well as in the following period. Although there have been academic programmes established for sport diplomacy at two universities in Hungary, the majority of professional athletes and graduating students of sport universities are not necessarily aware of their own skills required to work effectively and successfully in the international arena of sports and sports industry. They experience the massive lack of skills and understanding of diplomacy, international relations, intercultural challenges, protocol and language skills required when working for a sport club, federation or institution.

Find out more about this open call here

This article includes edited extracts from the pilot applications, written by the applicants