Improving health through modern sports and changing the approach to nutrition. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Improving health through modern sports and changing the approach to nutrition.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Rural development and urbanisation; Health and wellbeing; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

Every year the costs connected with the treatment of obesity effects and unhealthy lifestyle swallow up more and more spending. A high percentage of the people suffering from health problems is growing at an alarming rate. The situation concerns children and teenagers as well. This is a global problem and one of the effect is a growing number of early death caused by obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. Therefore, health is the most crucial and basic value of every human being no matter how old they are. It is even more important for children as it has effects on their later life. It is the role of school to be the most crucial promotor of health and it ought to point that following modern trends, it will cater for every aspect of it, with the use of sport disciplines that young people are interested in. The aim of the project is to improve every aspect of health of those directly engaged participants and all the people indirectly related to the project, namely pupils, teachers, parents and the whole society. The improvement not only involves physical health, but also mental and emotional. Besides, one should be conscious of his or her health, how to take care of it, have a healthy diet, how to prepare well-balanced meals and how to approach to stretching and rest after the training. The enhancement of knowledge involves more than 80% of all students from our school and two more schools located in our community by means of participating in preparatory activities. In order to improve all aspects of health one need to do particular sport disciplines. However, children are fed up with old- fashioned and radical attitude towards PE classes and they are eager to be exposed to modern sport disciplines. In rural areas it is really difficult to fight football worship and other popular disciplines. Therefore, we want to show some healthy alternatives such as cross training, acrobatics, artistic gymnastics, diving or kickboxing to children, which will be conducted during the preparatory activities and mobility organized in our school. What is more, we would like to emphasize popular disciplines in each of the country to all participants from the ones that take part in the project namely: Poland, Spain, North Macedonia, the Netherlands and Portugal. The disciplines include rugby, ice-skating, functional training, parkour, Zumba, beach sports or paddle, stick -ball or fronton which are specific to particular regions. They all need to be based on a well-balanced diet. Meetings with a dietician and a health coach will also be arranged. Thus, their knowledge will increase allowing the participants to look after health in a global way. Therefore, it will not only improve well-being of participants, but also bring other measurable benefits:
-reducing morbidity from diseases connected with a poor diet and lack of movement,
-reducing personal spending together with the country’s budget related to contemporary civilization,
-creating health-promoting habits.
Furthermore, groups consisting of 6 students and 2 supervising teachers from each country, participating in 5 short-term exchanges of groups of pupils, organized in those countries, will be direct participants engaged in the implementation of the project (a total of 120 and 40 teachers directly taking part in the planned activities). Students will be selected on the basis of the recruitment regulation developed by those responsible for the project management. All the students from our school, taking part in preparatory activities, will be indirect participants together with the whole society that will benefit from the proper attitude towards health. Owing to the mobilities in each of the country, we would be able to get to know their attitude towards teaching modern physical education and health issues. In order to prepare a particular mobility , we would like to take advantage of modern technologies combined with physical activities. Thus, games connected with modern disciplines and nutrition will be one of the tasks, for example “treasure hunt for health” with the use of QR codes for moving on to subsequent points. Preparatory activities ( taking place regularly at least 2 times a week) and meetings with a dietician and coaches are an excellent method to convey the aims of the project amidst children. Therefore, all people involved will be able to take advantage of its results via contact with a website created for the needs of the project, the school website or a fun page as well as the companies engaged in preparatory activities. The main recipients are the students involved in the project as well as those related to it in any way, like other schools in our community. Since the results will be shared in social media, anyone who is interested will be able to benefit from them at any time.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 162320 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zespol Szkol im. prof. Franciszka Leji w Grodzisku Górnym & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Colegio Sagrado Corazón de Jesus
• Agrupamento de Escolas Dr. Ferreira da Silva
• OOU VASIL GLAVINOV
• Osg Willemblaeu