Eyes projects and activities

This summer the 11 th Pre-Olympic Congress was held in Thessaloniki, Greece from 6 th to 11 th of August. The theme, which united more than 1000 participants from all over the world, was: Sport Science through the Ages: Challenges in the new Millennium. The Congress is of great importance to the international research community since it offers a unique opportunity to integrate various scientific contributions and create links between basic research, education and professional applications. It is the trade-mark of this congress that international and interdisciplinary bounds can be made.

This Pre-Olympic Congress was attended by the co-ordinating team and some of the partners of the project Sports Participation for inclusion of persons with a disability in European Countries, which is held within the framework of the European Year of Education through Sport (EYES). They presented during individual session as well as during the Congress exhibition the project itself and the CD-ROM ADAPT European Curriculum in Adapted Physical Activity. Great interest was shown from colleagues from not only Europe , but from the USA , Canada , Brazil , South Korea , and Israel . The CD-ROM was given to everybody interested in the subject. Announcements were made that by the end of 2004 ADAPT will be available in 15 European languages.

Great publicity was done for the European Year of Education through Sport (EYES) at the same time. With the help of the communication agency Media Consulta, a press release was prepared and given to be published in the Congress bulletin. Media Consulta provided a lot of brochures with information on what EYES is about, which in turn were distributed by our project team to almost every participant in the event. Banners with the EYES logo were offered as well to the project, which significantly facilitated the dissemination activities, planned during the biggest Pre-Olympic event this summer.

Paralympic Games

Prof. Van Coppenolle, in his role of co-ordinator of the EYES-project attended the Paralympics in Athens 2004 to organise a big media campaign for our project. During his time there, he gave a press conference in which he describes EYES, the project activities and at the same time he presented cd-rom ADAPT and outlined the future outcomes its translation into 12 European languages.

Zwintriatlon

Marc Herremans is one of the world-famous athletes with a disability from Belgium, competing in the discipline of triathlon. In the EYES-project Sports Participation for inclusion of persons with a disability in European Countries he is a star face of our media campaign, and he is playing a key role in the dissemination activities of the project as well.

The Marc Herremans’ Foundation “To walk again” is one of the strongest supporters of our initiative to translate the original CD-ROM ADAPT in 15 European languages, and in particular for the Dutch-Flemish translation.

On first of September 2004 Marc Herremans entered the triathlon “Zwintriatlon Knokke Heist” in Belgium where after a hard competition he finished with a time of 2h29min19sec. The co-ordinating team of the EYES-project took this event as a wonderful opportunity to be used for the dissemination of the project activities, as well as for the broad popularisation of the ideas of EYES. In an interview with the press, Marc Herremans promoted the EYES project and the taken initiative to translate a valuable resource of information on disability and sport into so many European languages. Informational brochures from EYES were distributed at the same time.

Closing event Tongerlo

As one of our closing event of EYES year, we organised a visit to the project of one of our ‘star faces’, Marc Herremans. With his organisation “To walk again” he supports and motivates young wheelchair users to participate in sports and physical activity. We went to visit them on one of their badminton training sessions in the SPORTA centre of Tongerlo. All the participants received a Dutch version of the ADAPT CD-Rom and some flyers of the EYES Website. We explained them all about the year of education through sports and the importance of sports for people with a disability in this project. The children and their parents were very enthusiastic about the CD-Rom and EYES website, as they are good sources of information for further participation in sport.

Of course we hope the ADAPT CD-Rom and the information on the EYES-website will help Marc Herremans and his team to convince more children and youngsters with a disability to be active and participate in sports.