Helping sports professionals better protect children is the essence of the Keeping Children Safe in Sports Project, initiated by Terre des hommes in Romania and in Greece last year. This is how the project intends to do this in the following weeks and months:
- On 27 May, we have the pleasure of inviting you to the first webinar for the project. It will explain what child safeguarding in sports and recreational settings means, and will include a description of the Keeping Children Safe in Sports objectives and activities. We will explain the potential risks that may arise in sports, and how they can be prevented and acted upon. The presenter, as well as the specific date and time of the webinar, will be announced soon on the ChildHub platform and on Terre des hommes Romania's Facebook page. The webinar will be available free upon registration at Childhub.org.
- Next, in Romania and Greece, support will be provided to 40 sports federations, clubs and summer camps to develop and promote child safeguarding policies. Focal points will be identified, and risk assessments will be conducted in sport clubs and recreational settings. Contextualized child safeguarding policies will be developed in line with the Keeping Children Safe coalition, international standards, and last but not least, with local legislation and the specificity of different sports and summer camps settings.
- In terms of capacity building, a training curriculum will be developed, both for the specialists and children. A training of trainers and cascade trainings will be organized in each country. The goal is to make sure that 240 professionals in contact with children in sports and recreational settings will be trained on safeguarding and child protection topics.
- Children will be involved throughout the project; 220 children and youth professionals from 40 sport clubs and summer camps will benefit from awareness sessions on child rights, abuse and reporting mechanisms. The logo of the quality label will be designed by children, and later shared for potential use in the wider European context. A wide media campaign will be organized in order to promote the quality label and the awards events which will be organized in each country.
- A special quality label will be created in partnership with associations and federations to publicly acknowledge the clubs and summer camps that have sound safeguarding systems in place, which will approve Child Safeguarding Policies and will commit to the Keeping Children Safe Standards.
Best practices will be shared for a wider audience at a European level on ChildHub.org. The online platform for child protection specialists ChildHub (www.childhub.org), developed by Tdh Hungary, operates in 10 countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and provides knowledge and capacity building opportunities for child protection professionals. Throughout the project, eight webinars will be organized on childhub.org, plus an e-learning course and a best practice collection guide will be uploaded.
Keeping Children Safe in Sports is a unique European project, initiated by Terre des hommes (Tdh) in Romania and in Greece (Tdh Hellas), and supported by Tdh Hungary, with the goal to promote child safeguarding policies in sports settings or summer camps in Romania and Greece. Thousands of children ages 12 through 18 practicing sports, and professionals in club sports and summer camps in both countries, will benefit indirectly from the entire project.
'Keeping Chilldren Safe in Sports' is financed by the 'Rights, Equality and Citizenship' Program of the European Union.