Tag: EMCA

The International Teqball Tournament was completed with great success at the Peace and Friendship Stadium, Piraeus Greece, gathering top athletes from six European countries. The tournament, held under the auspices of the Municipality of Piraeus and organized by Olympiacos, as part of the European Erasmus+ program, offered a unique spectacle and highlighted the growing momentum of the sport of Teqball at the European level.

In the final matches, Lazio’s team claimed first place in both singles and doubles, while the Hask team won in the mixed doubles category. The award ceremony for the winners took place in the presence of representatives from sports authorities, the Municipality of Piraeus, and the organizing committee.

The International Teqball Tournament strengthened the bonds of cooperation between the participating countries, confirming the European Union’s strong commitment to promoting sports and the values of cooperation, solidarity, and fair play. The participation of athletes from various European countries showcased the international dimension of the tournament and its significance for the development of Teqball in Europe.

The Erasmus+ program and the support of the Municipality of Piraeus were crucial to the success of this event, laying the foundations for future initiatives and collaborations in the field of sports.

The European Multisport Club Association (EMCA) participated in the GSIC Summit by Microsoft in Madrid, Spain, where the European DigiRoot project was presented. The DigiRoot project aims to foster digital innovation and enhance grassroots sports clubs across Europe by promoting the adoption of modern technologies that improve their operations and sustainability.

During the presentation, key representatives of EMCA, including President Christina Tsiligkiri, Development and Sustainability Director Bojan Mijatovic (HASK Mladost), Finance Director Malte Kalsbach (Bayern Leverkusen), and President of the General Assembly Vanina Milanova (Levski Sports for All), participated. The discussion was moderated by Guillermo Marín, Innovation Services Director at GSIC.

Malte Kalsbach, who played a pivotal role in developing the project, elaborated on the benefits of DigiRoot, explaining how digital solutions can support the sustainability of all sports clubs. His input particularly highlighted the opportunities the program opens up not only for EMCA members but for sports clubs across Europe.

“Levski-Sport for all” hosted a final meeting of the coordinators of ” FUNNY – fun athletics” in Sofia, during which the benefits of the training were presented, the participants shared experiences and discussed the possibilities for upgrading.

FUNNY – fun athletics” program was developed by the Association “Levski – Sport for All” to support physical education teachers and coaches in elementary education by type of sport. The purpose of the activities is for children to have maximum fun and gain basic physical skills in any environment, through a game approach and using non-specialized sports equipment. Teachers can organize games anywhere, using the gifts of nature: a cone instead of a ball, a stick instead of a stick, drawing in the sand instead of chalk and paint, etc.

The program was practically implemented for one year in the Association “Levski-Sports for All” together with SK Athletics “Levski-Sofia” for Bulgaria, ASD POLISPORT.PONTEVECCHIO for Italy and MSG Panserraikos for Greece. “Levski” organized classes in Sofia and Varshets with the participation of students from 10 schools, the Italian partner held the classes in 4 schools from the municipality of Bologna, and the Greek partner in 3 schools from Serres and with two of its sports academies, football and basketball.

For the qualitative implementation of the set goals, the partners commissioned Prof. Nina Atanasova from the Vasil Levski National Sports Academy to develop a “Handbook for outdoor sports activities”, which was also translated into English.

The project partners organized training for 40 coaches and managers based on the handbook and distributed it for free use by interested teachers and coaches, not only in their own network but also in that of the European Association of Multi-Sport Clubs.

A special guest at the event was Tsvetelina Kirilova , national indoor 1000m record holder and semi-finalist in the 400m hurdles at the Olympic Games and World Championships, multiple champion of Bulgaria at 400m, 800m and 400m hurdles, and currently one from the best conditioning specialists. Today, he takes care of the physical form of the national rhythmic gymnastics team.

She pointed out how important the role of this initiative is in attracting more children to practice athletics.

Todor Stefanov, chairman of the Levski-Sofia athletics club and OSK Levski, presented the historical role of the athletics section, the most successful in this sport with numerous medals from Olympic, world and European championships, as well as the look into the future , development apart from an elite direction and groups for sports for all.

Lucien Velchev, chairman of the “Levski – Sport for All” Association and coordinator of project activities for Bulgaria and Vanina Milanova – President of the Assembly of the European Association of Multi-Sport Clubs, gen. secretary of the Association “Levski – Sport for All” and project manager, told how the FUNNY project , co-financed by the European Commission , was created, how the activities under it were managed and coordinated, not only in Bulgaria, but also in the partner network, how created the fun cure manual as well as specific results.

The head of the project for Bulgaria is Vanina Milanova, gen. secretary of the Levski-Sports for All Association and president of the assembly of the European Association of Multi-Sport Clubs .

Konstantinos Gkountoulas – Director of Communications, Project Manager of MSG Panserraikos and Coordinator of Project Activities told how it was implemented in Greece. The multi-sport club has settled on a model directed in two directions, on the one hand sports events in 3 schools of the city of Serres with disadvantaged children, and on the other hand two of the club’s sports academies (basketball and football) have included fun athletics exercises , for warming up and cooling down the little athletes.

Emiliano Negrini – member of the management board, and communications manager of ASD POLISPORT.PONTEVECCHIO and coordinator of the sports activities of the project for Italy. The Italian partner has included the FUNNY project in its program to provide a social service to 4 schools in the municipality of Bologna, engaging nearly 900 children in activities.

“Handbook for outdoor sports activities”, Prof. Nina Atanasova, can be found in the E-library of “Levski-Sport for all”.

14 November is World Diabetes Day. This day commemorates the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, the scientist who first discovered, isolated and administered insulin in one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in history.

In the light of the World Diabetes Day that is marked on November 14th EMCA would like to share and promote our and our member clubs activities connected to this topic.

A few years ago, in 2020, from within EMCA specifically the clubs HAŠK Mladost and TSV Bayer Leverkusen a project “Sports&Diabetes – Tackling Diabetes with Sports” was started.

In this project the stress was put on enabling children with diabetes to do sport by educating all stakeholders how to handle risk concerning diabetes and reduce fears that lead to exclusion of children with diabetes.

In collaboration with IDF Europe (International Diabetes Federation region Europe) as well as Lazio, Olympiacos and WSC a comprehensive handbook “Tackling Diabetes with Sport” and a comic book for children “Super D tackling sport” that quickly educates all stakeholders and enables all children with diabetes to do or continue sport activities was created. These two publications are part of the EMCA Studia which is an initiative created by EMCA to gather knowledge and recommendations in the field off sport that were created either by EMCA or our member clubs.

The huge success of this project in terms of interest being shown to translate the handbook to approximately 20 languages and the comments received from within the diabetes family prompted us to continue working on this topic.

Project “Diabetes Digital Peer S(up)port” came as a result, a further milestone of the previous Sports&Diabetes project where it was identified that:

1. more in-depth, tailored training of coaches is required to optimally support people living with Diabetes type 1 (PwD), and 
2. that PwD would very much benefit from a place where they could ask for support of their own peers.

Idea of this project is to create a digital solution where knowledge and experiences of doing sport with diabetes can be found and shared. This digital community would be a place where people living with diabetes, coaches, parents, and experts from the fields of diabetes, sport, medicine, nutrition… could offer peer support: meet, share and get knowledge, experience, tips&tricks, help with problems and answer specific questions to help with encouraging and keeping people living with diabetes in sport.

The goal is to offer a tool where they can seek the knowledge on their own finding the basic and additional resources on doing sport with diabetes, but also share the knowledge in between.

EMCA as a partner in this new project will continue to promote sport as a toll for inclusion of all.

Follow our activities on the DiaPS project at sportsanddiabetes.eu.

The mascot of this edition of EWoS was Foxy – shown here on the stand, next to the Commissioner Mariya GABRIEL.

The rest of the programme was held at the beautiful venue of Bled, Slovenia, under the presidency of Slovenia.

Bled has a strong tradition in sports – starting with rowing more than 130 years ago – comparable to the age of average EMCA clubs.​

Children enjoyed many of the sports, one of which was especially interesting was canoeing. The moto of this EWoS was “JOY, RESILIENCE and INTERGENERATIONAL” – as was shown with physical programmes for the elderly. A curiosity was that the EMCA representative participated in the winning tea  m between competing 5 teams – promoting our Olympic ideals in this joyful manner.