The project DRAWS aims at promoting the integrity of sport by combating doping within recreational and non-elite young sport practitioners, starting from evidences (scientific studies, researches, and EU policies).
The project addresses the topic of doping in recreational environment thanks to the involvement of partner organizations from Eastern and Mediterranean regions in Europe that have been touched by doing scandals in the past and that could therefore be particularly interested in fighting and preventing the establishment of a pro-doping culture among youth sport participants. The consortium involves organizations that play different roles within the sport field. Such a partnership allows for a more effective implementation of the actions foreseen. Specifically:
- recreational sport organizations, such as Cesky svaz aerobiku a fitness FISAF, Levski - Sport for All and HAŠK Mladost, that work daily with the target group of the project (young participants in recreational sport);
- unions of sport federations and National Olympic Committees, like the Latvian Sports Federation Council, the Lithuanian Union of Sport Federations, Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano and Lega PRO, that are very active in the field of doping prevention and education of young athletes;
- a well known international institution that works in the dissemination of sport integrity and values, that is the International Olympic Truce Centre;
- an academic leader with strong experience in the field of integrity in sport and a deep knowledge of training and educating sport actors, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.
The rationale of the proposal is searching effectiveness in combating doping, notably in preventing the creation of a pro-doping culture through a set of educational activities among sport participants in recreational environments, through the following processes:
- Deepening the knowledge about recreational environments participants/athletes’ knowledge, attitudes, opinions and motivational orientations toward doping/substances to orient the contents and maximize the effectiveness of the educational tools;
- Designing and testing an effective training course for raising awareness and knowledge about doping among youth in recreational sport contexts (aged between 14-19 years old);
- Creating an attractive and immediate educational tool on doping prevention, knowledge and awareness raising in the form of comic/stripes, with the active engagement of young participants from the recreational environments;
- Implementing an educational doping campaign using the EDU-communication tools created, that are the training courses and the comic/stripes;
- Sharing and disseminating the EDU-communication tools at EU level (training courses + comic/stripes), to prevent and combat the establishment of a pro-doping culture among young participants in recreational sport environments.
A key-element of the proposal is activating a bottom-up process with the direct involvement of the target group which will lead to a structural link between specific data on doping knowledge, opinions, attitudes and motivational orientations in recreational environment on one side, and tailored awareness training courses for preventing doping in young sport participants in recreational environment on the other.
According to this proposal, the project will implement:
- A data collection to better understand the knowledge, attitudes, opinions and eventually motivational orientations toward controlled and uncontrolled PAES (doping) use of recreational athletes (aged 14-19 years old);
- An effective training and awareness raising course on doping and substances used in recreational sport, inspired and strongly oriented by the data collection;
- A bottom-up-created visual-based educational tool against doping, built with the engagement of recreational environments athletes/participants, that will consist in a comic or a series of stripes;
- A strong dissemination of the EDU-communicational tools created;
- A document that collects a series of suggestions, reflections, thoughts, visual materials (like videos, drawings, photos) that young people of the recreational environments involved in the project want to report to the European Union about doping.
Project goals
The DRAWS project has the following goals:
- To build and consolidate a European network of stakeholders from different fields and with different skills and specific competencies (from sport organizations, to sport federations, sport committees and sport institutions) interested in combating doping in sport recreational environments;
- To test, create and disseminate a set of open training courses strongly linked to perceptions, attitudes, opinions and motivational orientations of the target group (recreational environment young athletes and participants aged between 14-19 years old);
- To create a tailored EDU-communication tools against doping in recreational environment to prevent the establishment of a pro-doping culture within the target group;
- To raise awareness, through the active engagement of recreational young athletes/participants, about the social and health consequences doping can have;
- To create permanent, attractive, and immediate edu-communication tools (training courses and comic/stripes), to be easily disseminated at European level, that can combat the diffusion and use of doping substances;
- To raise youth recreational sport participants’ engagement in doping prevention and knowledge of European polices regarding this topic;
- To create functional tools for doping prevention in recreational environments.
In order to reach these goals, the project will implement the following actions:
- Data collection on doping opinions, attitudes, knowledge and motivational orientations among young athletes in recreational environments, to orient training courses contents and materials;
- Elaboration of a training and awareness course on doping through the application of a set of methodologies following a bottom-up approach;
- Engaging young sport participants in the creation of a comic / stripes against doping with the direct collaboration of a professional artist. Involved participants will identify the characters, plots, contexts, and all the necessary parts of the comic/stripes;
- Dissemination of the EDU-communication tools (training courses and comic/stripes) through the partner organizations in third Countries;
- Establishment of an external network of stakeholders, sponsors and support institutions formed by a set of sporting and non-sporting actors interested in supporting the project both during its lifetime and after its end, by disseminating the aims and the EDU-communication tools created during the project;
- Elaboration of both a document to report suggestions, reflections, thoughts that young people of the recreational environments want to report to the European Union about doping and also a more institutional document dedicated to formal and scientific suggestions, reflections and ideas for the prevention of doping within the recreational environments intended for a more specialized public;
- Communication of the actions and the intellectual outputs of the project.
