Български
NEWS
INTERNATIONAL PARA-SPORT CONFERENCE WITH BULGARIAN PARTICIPATION IN THESSALONIKI
04.06.2022
An international para-sport conference was held in Thessaloniki, Greece in the period 02.06-04.06, 2022, which aimed to discuss the challenges in the dual career of the European athletes with physical disabilities. The meeting brought together experts in the field of adapted physical activity and sports, para-athletes, as well as representatives of the European, Swedish, Greek, Serbian and Croatian Paralympic Committees. The international event was held within the PARAdig /Dual-Track Careers for Para-Athletes/ project. Within the initiative, an online platform was created to support the professional development and to lay the foundations for the business and entrepreneurial skills, adapted to the needs of people with physical disabilities, in order to provide them with full personal and professional development. Bulgaria is actively working within the initiative in cooperation with the National Sports Academy "Vasil Levski" and the Bulgarian sports development association, which was presented at the conference by Joanna Dochevska (chairperson of BSDA), Assoc. Prof. Stefka Djobova, PhD and Ivelina Kirilova, PhD – world-renowned experts in the theory and practice of adapted sports. During the visit to Thessaloniki, a presentation of the "Adapted Sports and Inclusive Education" master's program of NSA "Vasil Levski" was organized.
The ParaDig platform, developed within the project, is available at: https://paradig.eu/. The access to it is completely free after a short registration.
For athletes in EU member states is still a vivid challenge to combine their sports training, events and competitions with their need to receive an adequate education with a view to developing a sports career-end strategy for their subsequent employment, something informed by the EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes. With the greater focus on inclusion of people with a disability to take up sports (originally inspired by the hard-won success of the Paralympics) and the improvements to accessibility and the design of sports facilities, there are ever greater numbers of people with disabilities taking up sports, and becoming great athletes in the field. These athletes face the same problem of timetabling their dual pursuits, but they have several additional obstacles to deal with (expand), in the process of training and in the process of getting prepared for employment.
There are roughly 80 million people in the EU member states that have some kind of disability; they divide into two categories:
• Definition 1: Those persons having a basic activity difficulty (such as sight, hearing, walking, communicating);
• Definition 2: Those persons limited in work activity because of a longstanding health problem and/or a basic activity difficulty.
PARAdig /Dual-Track Careers for Para-Athletes/ project is primarily dealing with Definition 1 and applies this definition to people who despite their disability have, like the Paralympic athletes, had the “courage, determination, inspiration and sense of equality” to break through any supposed limits and achieved high performance as athletes. In the frame of the project entrepreneurship programs are developed, as a form of self-employment. Those programs include different stages, starting from (1) Finding out the athlete's own interests/passion and transforming it into (2) business idea; (3) how to set up a company; (4) how to find sponsors and how to pitch the idea – e.g. how to use their disability as an asset; (5) motivation; (6) leadership.
PARAdig project is co-funded under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
For athletes in EU member states is still a vivid challenge to combine their sports training, events and competitions with their need to receive an adequate education with a view to developing a sports career-end strategy for their subsequent employment, something informed by the EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes. With the greater focus on inclusion of people with a disability to take up sports (originally inspired by the hard-won success of the Paralympics) and the improvements to accessibility and the design of sports facilities, there are ever greater numbers of people with disabilities taking up sports, and becoming great athletes in the field. These athletes face the same problem of timetabling their dual pursuits, but they have several additional obstacles to deal with (expand), in the process of training and in the process of getting prepared for employment.
There are roughly 80 million people in the EU member states that have some kind of disability; they divide into two categories:
• Definition 1: Those persons having a basic activity difficulty (such as sight, hearing, walking, communicating);
• Definition 2: Those persons limited in work activity because of a longstanding health problem and/or a basic activity difficulty.
PARAdig /Dual-Track Careers for Para-Athletes/ project is primarily dealing with Definition 1 and applies this definition to people who despite their disability have, like the Paralympic athletes, had the “courage, determination, inspiration and sense of equality” to break through any supposed limits and achieved high performance as athletes. In the frame of the project entrepreneurship programs are developed, as a form of self-employment. Those programs include different stages, starting from (1) Finding out the athlete's own interests/passion and transforming it into (2) business idea; (3) how to set up a company; (4) how to find sponsors and how to pitch the idea – e.g. how to use their disability as an asset; (5) motivation; (6) leadership.
PARAdig project is co-funded under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
