Every youngster should manage their time, where possible, to allow for sports participation. Every club should organize activities at suitable, flexible and accessible times for youngsters to be able to participate. Clubs should balance time commitment required with youngsters’ participation level (i.e. recreational, advanced or elite) and should be mindful of the time youngsters need to give to other aspects of their lives (e.g. education).
Working actions
Actions for coaches/trainers
- Help and support youngsters to learn how to organize their time and be more efficient.
- Inform youngsters on the possibilities to combine sport with school and/or work.
- Passion for sport could teach youngsters to be time-efficient. Make them passionate!
Actions for clubs
- Organize sport classes (directly) after school (end of the midday). Followed by dinner and homework session or social work. Therefore, youngsters are not going home after sport, with the risk that they don’t return. Also, eating and homework are to be done anyway.
- Implicate parents in collective/ shared transportation if the travel distance between school and sport facility is important.
- Offer homework classes and support at the sport club if practice does not ideally fit the school schedule.
Tools
Card Games Keep Youngsters Involved
The most important tool in the toolkit are the card games, developed for the Erasmus+ Sport project Keep Youngsters Involved.
These card games help you to get to know more about how to implement actions in the sport club to keep youngsters (12-19 year) involved and prevent them from dropout.
The different card games can help professionals who work with youngsters in sport, young adults and sport clubs how to improve their policy on youth, and help by creating a sport club action plan.
Cards
In total there are 169 action cards. For every factor you can choose a variety of cards. You can choose the cards and print* them in colour to be able to use them. Cut them out and they are ready to be used.
* best printer settings: choose page sizing ‘fit’
Card Games
There are 3 different cards games:
- Card game 1: Choose your cards
- Card game 2: Roleplay Keep Youngsters Involved
- Card game 3: Go Fish
Download the toolkit with card games
Quick scan Y-score for sports clubs
How youth-oriented is your sports club? In other words, is your club accessible and attractive to young members? Does the club give enough consideration to the wishes, needs and possibilities of the various groups of young people? And especially, how can this be improved?The Y-score answers these questions. It is an instrument that quickly and easily gives insight into how youth-oriented your club is. It helps you to look at your club through a young person’s ‘pair of glasses’.