In July, the week before the final of the EURO 2024 Football Championship, Common Goal partnered with the UEFA Foundation for Children and hosted a Forum in Berlin, Germany.
Around 100 participants from organisations from the football-for-good sector worldwide discussed current challenges and projects for social impact through sport and football in various formats. For the BESST project, Soenke Schadwinkel and Bastian Grueger from the EOA held a work session in which the preliminary results of the legal frameworks for sports organisations were tested and put in practice with the participants.
Earlier in the year, project BESST released its report on the conceptual framework of transgressive behaviour and is currently working on safeguarding legal frameworks for sports organisations and an awareness and education toolkit.
In workshops and roundtables, the BESST project partners presented the project progress and findings and engaged in a discussion on safeguarding mechanisms and relevance in the football-for-good sector with practitioners from Asia, Africa and Europe. The participants highlighted the usefulness of the legal frameworks for the development of a safeguarding concept for their organisations and emphasised the benefits of collaboration in the common challenge of safer sport.
For project BESST, Soenke Schadwinkel, Bastian Grueger (both EOA) and Carine N’Koue (UEFA Foundation for Children) were attending.
About the project BESST
The aim of the BESST initiative is to develop a modern unifying definition, a legal framework and an awareness and education toolkit for National Olympic Committees, sport federations and clubs and guidelines for European sports event organisers in order to provide the organisations with the necessary support to make sport safer for everyone involved.
The BESST project team consists of the following organisations: European Olympic Academies, IGNITX, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Rudi Hiti Academy, UEFA Foundation for Children, NOC of Netherlands (NOC*NSF), and NOC of Slovenia.