For this Friday’s Focus feature, we are going into a topic that is at the very centre of the European Hockey Federation’s core message: Hockey is for everyone. Young, old, high level or beginner, man, woman, you can play hockey. In order to do this, we have several prongs to our ‘Hockey4All’ programme, encompassing youth and ParaHockey (both LD and PD).
The Youth Panel is currently recruiting new members, and they need YOU to get involved! Please click here for more info and how to join, and click here to see what ParaHockey is about!
Our Youth Panel Member Leen Ryckx went to Warsaw, Poland, to participate in the FC Inclusion in Sport training course, 21st – 25th October. This training course was organised by the EU’s Erasmus+ Youth In Action programme. The aims of the course were fostering the use of sport as an educational tool for social inclusion, discovering/sharing and testing various educational practices, and to broaden and truly understand what inclusion really means, among others.
Leen participated alongside 26 youth leaders from 14 countries, from a range of sports. They followed the 5 day course which guided them through the steps and practices for including the youth in sport.
This was particularly interesting for Leen, as she explains: “For me, it was very interesting due to my work with ParaHockey in Belgium and my work with the EHF Youth Panel. The training course not only covered inclusion of children with a disability but also how to address inclusion with children from a difficult social background. This is an area that I think is very important to explore.”
During the course, alternative educational methods were used, explained and explored: it was a mixture of workshops, outdoor activities and lectures from experts from the world of sports, such as the FC Legia Warsaw Foundation who gave a presentation regarding their own inclusion program and its development. Participants were encouraged to prepare their own strategy for sport as s tool for inclusion at home. Sharing knowledge of differing methods, backgrounds and experience made the course a success.
Are you interested in joining the EHF Youth Panel and working on inclusion? Make sure to check out their page on our website, and email youthpanel@eurohockey.org. For more information on ParaHockey, please email norman@eurohockey.org
Source: Leen Ryckx/EHF/Erasmus+