Purpose Generations Uniting through Sport (GUS) stimulates mutual understanding between youngsters and elderly people with sports activities. The project aims to promote intergenerational relations and increased physical activity by setting up an innovative and sustainable program. The concept for the GUS program is to identify, recruit, train and support a cohort of experienced practitioners. These professionals and volunteers will facilitate local-scale collaboration projects between youngsters and elderly people to increase their participation in physical activity and sport. The program will bring together young and old beneficiaries, through trained practitioners. The aim of the current research was to generate a state of the art overview of available evidence and practices that facilitate the development and implementation of intergenerational programs. Methods The literature search consists of two parts. One part focuses on identifying scientific literature on working principles within intergenerational programs. The search will be performed in Google Scholar, Pubmed and PROSPERO and is restricted to literature from the year 2000 onwards and languages used within the consortium. Main search terms are ‘adolescent’, ‘elderly’, ‘intergenerational’, ‘activity’/’program’ and synonyms of these terms. The second part of the search is performed within the project consortium and focuses on good practices from national and local settings. Searches will be performed in grey literature and through personal networks in France, Spain, Bulgaria, United Kingdom and Slovenia. Literature analysis focuses on activities, target groups, involved stakeholders, behavioral change models, barriers and outcomes/impact. Results The literature search results in a set of principles for programs and activities tailored towards generations uniting through sport/movement in Europe. More specific, it synthesizes behavioral change models incorporating methodologies that motivate youngsters and elderly people to exercise together and reduces some of the motivational and structural barriers to intergenerational programs. Conclusions The final results and conclusions will be presented at the conference.
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Despite several decades of Sport for All policies, opportunities for sports participation are still unequally divided, with certain socially disadvantaged groups having less access to sports. To reduce this gap, structural efforts are needed. A question that arises is what role nonprofit sports clubs can fulfill in this matter. In this study, first, it is explored how nonprofit sports clubs perceive their role and responsibility towards socially disadvantaged groups and how they act on it. Second, it is investigated which factors predict the presence or absence of efforts from nonprofit sports clubs for lowering barriers. For this second question, we focus on people living in poverty. Data are based on a survey among 580 nonprofit sports clubs throughout Flanders (Belgium). The findings indicate that the human resources capacity of the club is not the main barrier. It is argued that local sports authorities and sports federations have an important part to play in supporting and encouraging sports clubs in terms of social inclusionary policies, for example by instilling awareness.
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Background: Health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) promotion programs are implemented in sports clubs. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the insufficiently active participants that benefit from these programs. Methods: Data of three sporting programs, developed for insufficiently active adults, were used for this study. These sporting programs were implemented in different sports clubs in the Netherlands. Participants completed an online questionnaire at baseline and after six months (n = 458). Of this sample, 35.1% (n = 161) was insufficiently active (i.e. not meeting HEPA levels) at baseline. Accordingly, two groups were compared: participants who were insufficiently active at baseline, but increased their physical activity to HEPA levels after six months (activated group, n = 86) versus participants who were insufficiently active both at baseline and after six months (non-activated group, n = 75). Potential associated characteristics (demographic, social, sport history, physical activity) were included as independent variables in bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses.
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