The objective of the COACH+ project is to increase the competence of sports coaches to deliver youth work based Sport Plus sessions in Sport-for-Employability (SfE) organisations that work with young NEETs. For that purpose, a comprehensive and user-friendly online training course for Sport Plus coaching methodology (MOOC), drawing on good practice from youth work, will be developed. The partnership consists of 5 organisations, each working within a particular sector: that is, the academic sector including a sports coach educational institute; social (SfE) sector (2 organisations); local sports sector and youth work in general. Activities, among other things, will include literature review, interviews with youth workers, meetings, workshops, webinars with SfE organisations and other relevant stakeholders. The course will use an experiential learning approach by emphasising active involvement of learners challenging them to integrate underlying theories of employability (soft) skills to be developed into practice, as well as to implement guiding principles from youth work. The relevance and effectiveness of the training course will be tested with university students in sport, as well as with in-service SfD coaches involved in Sport-for-Development (SfD) programmes. Various external communication and dissemination activities will be used to inform 4 types of target groups: those that work directly with young NEETs in a SfE (SfD) context (the project also intends to reach the larger part of the more than 200 registered SfD organisations located in the EU); educators responsible for the formation of sports coaches or youth workers in SfE (SfD); those working in (or coordinating) SfE (SfD) organisations but not directly involved in the sports delivery and other relevant stakeholders, such as academics, umbrella organisations representing practitioners/organisations involved in similar topics and working in relevant sectors, as well as policymakers at different levels.

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The COACH+ project is a cooperative partnership, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and coordinated by the Research Group Sport & Society of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE) with input and expertise from Rheinflanke GGMBH (DE), Sport 4 Life (UK), NAPOR (RS) and Netwerk Lokaal Sportbeleid (BE).

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