Published as the result of a transnational project conducted within the framework of the EU Preparatory Actions in the Field of Sport between 2011 and 2012, this document is based on a survey by questionnaire, interactive workshops and interviews with stakeholders.
The guide identifies half a dozen of “key elements of successful diversity management” and illustrates them with a total of 13 different projects that are presented as examples of good practice (p. 14-39):
- Funding – one of the major challenges for actors, marked by lack of long-term vision by authorities and other funding sources and sharp heterogeneity of local/national contexts.
- Planning – emphasis on clearly defining goals, expectations and target group; being “customer-oriented” rather than “curriculum-centred” (i.e. giving priority to participants’ needs rather than to the “ideal” contents of the training); formulating a strategy; being able to adjust, if necessary, the planning to the environment.
- Communication and awareness raising – involving all stakeholders, stimulating dialogue between majority and minority groups (“inter-actor learning”); raising awareness on intercultural competencies; developing “narrative explanations” on the benefits for all.
- Recruitment and reaching – reaching out effectively to the target population and addressing the issues of transport and costs; developing diversity within sports organisations and proactively providing opportunities for volunteering and skill acquisition by migrants.
- Collaboration – establishing dialogue between stakeholders (especially on the local level).
- Evaluation – trying to measure the success of a project, ideally through external evaluation, but also through participant feedback, and self-evaluation (of motivations and methods).
The analysis of these key elements is then broken down in a list of concrete recommendations for sports organisations and sports clubs (p. 40-44), with the aim of raising awareness on possible pitfalls in setting up activities targeted at migrant populations and finding the most appropriate sources of information and collaboration partners on different levels (from European to local).