Eco-Friendly Sports for Youth Development and Inclusion

It's inevitable that we have to do something about climate change. Not only reduce, reuse and recycle, but we can actively contribute to protect our planet and take direct action. Pollution is enormous problem and lack of recycling is even bigger challenge. Therefore, in the last years, there were new types of activities developed and promoted in order to tackle both – lack of physical movement of people, but also increasing pollution of our nature, beaches, forests....There are various activities that can be organized combining sport and physical activities with enviro actions:
• picking up the trash - e.g. running (plogging), hiking, water sports (rowing for clean water, paddling for the planet, kayaking, surfing, diving), yoga or other cardio meetups on the beach or in the parks (and before or after clean-up event),
• environmental sport outdoor education programs and games that combine physical movement with environmental learning (for example, recycle relay or eco-scavenger hunt),
• repair cafés, planting trees, building birdhouses etc.
Therefore the aim of the project is to promote sport and physical activities that not only contribute to better health, but has also positive impact on environment (2 in 1).
OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT:
• to promote and develop new methods of environmental education through sport,
• to foster young people engagement in sport, but also encourage them to take action towards more sustainable environment,
• to improve knowledge and experience of youth workers about concept of eco-friendly sports,
• to increase amount of organized events like clean-up events, plogging, planting trees, birdhouse building, repair cafés etc. on local level,
• to generate public awareness about possible connection of sport and protection of environment,
• to contribute to social inclusion and employability of young people from rural areas