Educational tools for coaches & sport clubs that want to prioritise mental well-being & inclusion
The SPIRIT project sparked and facilitated an important discussion on the need to prioritise mental well-being and inclusion in sport.
Throughout the project, several educational tools were developed for sport coaches and sport clubs who wish to improve their knowledge on the topic of mental well-being and inclusion of athletes in grassroots sport.
A three-year Erasmus+ sport and psycho-social initiative, that combined 12 different organisations, was built on the belief that positively humane coaching can decrease drop-out levels in sport and therefore contributes to higher levels of physically active citizens, stronger public health and more inclusive grassroot sport.
SPIRIT kicked off in 2020 with a development of the first outcomes: definition of mental well-being, systematic literature review and key findings which investigated the role of coaches in the promotion of mental well-being-enhancing physical activity. The two documents were followed by the mapping of the good practices and recommendations for coach education and club management.
Those documents laid the foundation for the main outputs of the SPIRIT project: online course, mental well-being toolkit and the final conference.
The Mental well-being coaching toolkit is a coach development program with a collection of resources to protect and enhance mental well-being skills of sport participants.
The Sport Coaching for Mental Well-being online course is an online education tool which was designed for sport coaches, sport clubs and federations who aim to improve their knowledge on the topic of mental well-being and inclusion of athletes in grassroots sport.
The course is translated to 7 languages and consists of 6 modules:
- Introduction to sports coaching and mental well-being
- Your coaching behaviour and style
- Your coach-athlete relationship
- Managing threats to well-being and coaching in times of crisis
- Coaching refugees and vulnerable groups
- The culture of your sport organisation Start module
The final conference, entitled “Sport Coaching for Mental Well-being” gathered ENGSO members and representatives of the grassroots sport movement on 12 October 2022, in Arnhem, The Netherlands. With presentations of the project, interviews with coaches and former refugees who found their safe space in grassroots sport, experts on mental health and a hackathon on inclusion, the conference concluded the project’s three year journey.
To learn more about the project and its outputs, visit the official website of the project: www.engso-education.eu/spirit
