Monitoring and Evaluation Manual for
Sport-for-Employability Programmes

Register for the conference

Conference on Sport for Employability for young NEETS

17 June 2021 between 9:30 and 12:00 CET via MS Teams

Purpose: to reflect on the potential of a variety of approaches to ‘Sport for Employability’ targeting young NEETs and to address relevant policy issues on this topic.

Target group: this conference is aimed at representatives from

sport for employability / sport for development organisations
employment sector (employment services, employers)
youth work with NEETs
education
sport sector
policy (local, national, European, International)
research

Programme:

09:30-09:45 Welcome and introduction to the conference

Marc Theeboom (Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB)

09:45-10:15 Introduction to Sport for Employability

Fred Coalter (Visiting professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB)

10:15-11:00. Examples of effective Sport-for-Employability programmes

Praveen Singh (Director Impact Magic Bus - India)

Robin Schröder (Coordinator international projects Rheinflanke - Germany)

Lindsey MacDonald (Managing Director Street League - United Kingdom)

11:00-11:50 Sport for Employability for young NEETs: Policy debate on the way forward

Panel members:

Marisa Fernandez Esteban (Deputy Head of the EU Sport Unit)

Harry Wade (Project Manager at DHL UK Foundation)

Saad Mohammed (Head of Research & Impact Sport 4 Life)

Giovanni di Cola (Special Adviser Office of the Deputy Director General of the International Labour Organisation - ILO)

Iva Glibo (Committee Member ENGSO YOUTH)

Fred Coalter (VUB)

Moderator:

Marc Theeboom (VUB)

11:50-12:00 Closure

If you want to attend, please register below and we will send you a weblink and gentle reminder in advance.

Objective of the Project

To develop a user-friendly monitoring and evaluation Manual that can help sports-based organisations that aim to increase the level of employability of the young people they work with.

The Manual should enable these organisations to work in a more efficient and effective way for delivering their programmes. It should help them to design and organise sport-for-employability programmes more systematically and should provide them with a better understanding on how to measure the outcomes and impact.

To include as wide a variety of programmes and activities as possible, the Manual explores the ambiguous term employability and distinguishes between hard and soft skills and outlines research-based and employer-defined components of employability. It is argued that sports represent a variety of different social relationships and social processes, in which it is assumed that certain types of learning may occur. Reflecting this variety the Manual adopts the Council of Europe’s Revised European Sports Charter Definition of Sport (2001):

“Sport means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming relationships or obtaining results in competitions at all levels.”

The Manual argues that sport on its own will make a limited contribution to developing employability skills and that sport plus is required – sport needs to be amended and/or supported with other activities and workshops, with an especially important role for mentoring. The Manual defines a series of relevant outcomes related to employability and provides scales with which to measure them and explains how to interpret the data.

The Manual uses a Theory of Change methodology, while applying best practice data from Europe and India, supported by diverse stakeholders. By mid 2021, this multi-stakeholder cooperation will publish a user-friendly Manual that will help sports-based organisations to increase the level of employability of the young people they work with.

The MONITOR project is a collaborative partnership, coordinated by the VUB with input and expertise from different sport-for-employability partners (Street League, Sport 4 Life, Oltalom, Rheinflanke, Rotterdam Sportsupport, and Magic Bus), executed with assistance from ENGSO Youth and with support from ILO.