sport2live - Esports Partner

sport2live – Sport as a Gateway to Inclusion, Skills and Employment

sport2live is a Barcelona (spain) Foudation specialised in using physical activity and sport as tools for social inclusion, mental wellbeing, personal development and recovery among vulnerable populations.

For the ESF+ Social Innovation+ Anti-Poverty Call – Roma NEETs, we are interested in joining European consortia as an implementation, pilot, training and impact-assessment partner.

Our approach is simple: before asking a vulnerable young person to enter education or employment, we often need to engage them, build trust, strengthen confidence and develop the personal and social skills needed to sustain that pathway. Sport can be the gateway.

sport2live can co-design and implement sport-based activation programmes for Roma NEETs, using physical activity not as an end in itself, but as a first step towards social inclusion, education, vocational training and employment. Sport provides an attractive, low-threshold environment to reach young people who may be disconnected from employment services, educational institutions or conventional social programmes.

We work through Mental Fit®, our methodology integrating physical activity, mental wellbeing and personal development, validated by COPLEFC – the Official College of Physical Activity and Sport Professionals of Catalonia. Mental Fit® uses sport to develop competencies relevant to social and labour-market inclusion: self-confidence, motivation, responsibility, emotional regulation, communication, teamwork, perseverance, goal setting, healthy routines and sense of belonging.

For Roma NEETs, we propose adapting this methodology together with Roma organisations and young people themselves, ensuring culturally appropriate and community-based interventions.

Our Sport-to-Skills-to-Employment model creates a clear pathway:
Outreach → Sport Engagement → Trust & Belonging → Mental Fit® & Life Skills → Mentoring → Education/VET → Work Experience → Employment/Self-employment → Follow-up.

Sport becomes an engagement and activation platform from which Roma organisations, employment services, VET providers, municipalities, companies and NGOs can deliver specialised interventions. Our role is especially relevant in the stage before employability: reaching participants, creating engagement, rebuilding confidence, establishing routines and preparing young people to enter and remain in education, training or employment.

sport2live can co-design and run pilots in Spain, train local professionals, implement Mental Fit® programmes, support mentoring pathways and connect participants with community, education and employment resources. We can also contribute to monitoring and evaluation, measuring progression in wellbeing, confidence, motivation, social connection, soft skills, engagement with training, transition into education/employment and retention.

Our objective is to generate evidence on whether structured sport-based activation can increase the capacity of disengaged young people to enter and sustain education, training and employment pathways.

sport2live also has extensive experience in European projects and transnational cooperation, including Erasmus+, Erasmus+ Mobility and Interreg initiatives, connecting sport, mental health, social inclusion, education and vulnerable populations. We have experience working in international, multidisciplinary consortia with NGOs, universities, hospitals, mental health organisations, public institutions, community stakeholders and sport organisations.

We can contribute beyond pilot delivery through project co-design, work package implementation, methodology development, professional training, knowledge exchange, impact measurement, dissemination, mutual learning and European replication. We are particularly interested in testing common methodologies across countries, generating comparable evidence and identifying solutions that can be transferred, replicated and scaled across Europe.

Employment services, training providers and employers are essential. But for young people experiencing long-term exclusion, poverty or disengagement, the first challenge is often reaching and engaging them and helping them see that a different pathway is possible. Sport can provide that first step.

sport2live is looking for European consortia interested in adding a practical, evidence-based and scalable sport-based activation component to their Roma NEET strategy. Our ambition is to demonstrate how sport can become a pathway from exclusion to participation, from participation to skills, and from skills to education and sustainable employment.