Four successful grassroots sport initiatives will roll out to brand new countries this year through ISCA’s MOVE Transfer International process.

Two of the UK’s most acclaimed sport for all programmes, Birmingham City Council’s Active Parks and StreetGames’ Doorstep Sport Clubs, will be launched in Poland and Kosovo respectively. The German Gymnastics Federation’s (Deutscher Turner-Bund) EU-supported Active Age programme, completed last year, will be transferred to one of Europe’s oldest grassroots sport organisations, Czech Sokol, in the Czech Republic. And Sport Malta’s (KMS) growing campaign, Summer on the Move, will be delivered in Serbia this summer by the Serbian Sport for All Association.

Read below to find out more about the initiatives that will be transferred to new locations around Europe through the MOVE Transfer process.

Initiative: Active Parks

Transfer organisation: Birmingham City Council, UK

Receiving organisation: V4SPORT Foundation in partnership with the World Games 2017 and Municipality of Wroclaw, Poland

Active Parks was created by Birmingham City Council to offer free physical activities to the local public in parks and other open spaces. The initiative started in Birmingham and has now been rolled out to 50 parks in Birmingham, Newcastle and London. Coca-Cola Great Britain pledged its support behind Active Parks in 2014 and the expanded initiative is now known as Coca-Cola Zero ParkLives.

Find out more about Active Parks here and here:

Initiative: Doorstep Sport Clubs

Transfer organisation: StreetGames, UK

Receiving organisation: The Independent Organisation for Sport Education in Kosovo (OESK)

Doorstep sport is an approach that has been at the heart of StreetGames’ activities since the non-profit organisation began in 2007. The secret of its success is its motto of delivering attractive physical activity offers to socially disadvantaged youth “at the right time, the right price, the right place and in the right style”, says StreetGames’ CEO Jane Ashworth. A doorstep sport club is not a traditional, organised grassroots sport club as we often know it. It is an informal, yet carefully thought out, delivery of physical activity sessions by local community sport and recreation providers that is tailored to each target group’s needs.

Find out more about Doorstep Sport Clubs here

Initiative: Active Age

Transfer organisation: Deutscher Turner-Bund (DTB), Germany

Receiving organisation: Czech Sokol Organisation, Czech Republic

The 18-month Europe-wide Active Age Project was completed under the EU’s Preparatory Actions in the Field of Sport and aimed to build awareness and capacity in the field of active aging. Its results were used to produce a handbook Capacity Building for Physical Activity of Older People containing recommendations, guidelines and practical tools for organisations to promote active aging. The project has also inspired the creation of a new networking platform for stakeholders in active ageing, Moving Age.

Find out more about Active Age and Moving Age

Initiative: Summer on the Move

Transfer organisation: Sport Malta (KMS), Malta

Receiving organisation: Serbian Sport for All Association, Serbia

Summer on the Move started in Malta in 2010 as a way to get Maltese adults and children active during the summer months. Around 29 activities were offered at schools, clubs and sports facilities between July and September in 2014. The activities ranged from canoeing and aquatic sports to hip-hop dancing, tai chi and team sports. The summer festival of physical activity attracts more than 3,500 participants each year.

Find out more about Summer on the Move here

What is MOVE Transfer?

The grassroots sport sector takes pride in sharing good practices and ISCA, as part of our ongoing work, has become aware of many practices that have proven so successful that transferring them to other settings would seem a very valuable investment. But this has not often happened. We have also noticed that successful local initiatives have not been brought to scale at a national level.

Therefore, ISCA has created MOVE Transfer as a process of identifying physical activity initiatives for hard-to-reach populations that have run successfully in one setting and transferring them to a new setting (new organisation, new community). It will also offer certain initiatives the opportunity to expand their scope within their own country (“scaling up” the initiative).

MOVE Transfer is supported by Coca-Cola Europe. Visit the official project website here