Customer case

Erasmus+ Project: IncluPAS

IncluPAS - An innovation project that promotes social inclusion through physical activity and sports with youngsters

IncluPAS is a social innovation project that aims to advance social inclusion through Physical Activity and Sports initiatives with the help of an application. IncluPAS stands for Inclusion through Physical Activity and Sport. With the project, the IncluPAS team focused on using sport as a means to support disadvantaged groups, so they have the opportunity to interact and integrate with other social groups. The goal was to reach adolescents between 14 and 18 years old, living in an urban setting, often characterized by higher population density and ethnic diversity.

The challenge?

For this project, we had the specific task to set up a bottom-up community by identifying and activating ambassadors and/or influencers, the so-called “Community Champions”. This search for ambassadors was supported by our experience in communication strategy and marketing. For the IncluPAS project we had to set up the communication strategy internally (within the IncluPAS team and within the three pilot cities) and externally (towards organizations, the youngsters, and other possible stakeholders). Communication was our power tool to reach participants and partners, and identify Community Champions, in a way that appeals to all of them, creates trust, and ensures that they recognize themselves as a target audience for the initiatives. This via several channels of (digital) communication but also with the use of an app (CityLegends) to facilitate this. 

 

Our approach?

With research (community scan) and co-creation with the project partners, organizations, and youngsters, we shaped a communication strategy for this project. We first mapped out all possible stakeholders and looked at where we could create added value for each of them. We also evaluated the needs and goals, indicating the necessary means to create the perfect atmosphere for the youngsters to be active in. Together with a high-level action plan, we created several campaigns (f.ex. the app launch campaign) that were easy to be implemented in each of the pilot cities if they had the need for it. As a network depends on its ambassadors, we were able to try out and optimize these strategies in Ghent, Vilnius, and finally Thessaloniki. An important part of this project was the opportunity for process evaluation, from the start of the project and in collaboration with partners and targeted communities. We were able to actively monitor progress, evaluate this process towards achieving targeted outcomes and critically reflect on learnings to effectively improve.

Together with the project partners, we were able to create a step-by-step program, via the learning platform called ‘Learnworlds’, which makes it today possible to translate our idea of creating social inclusion through sports for youngsters, to other cities in Europe. 

The results?

Key take-aways

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The Community Champions in this project are the beating heart of the community and the reason why a project like this, comes to life. These youngsters take initiative, they promote activities, and they are the key to creating a sustainable project (a project that lives on, even after the end of the ‘project’).

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Communication ensures that we reach youngsters, Community Champions and organizations in a way that appeals to them, creates trust and ensures that they recognize themselves in it. Even though the main goal was the same for every city, they each followed another path towards that goal.

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The goal of the project was to foster interaction between different social groups and organisations, through physical activity and sports. Within the project we wanted to test the use of an application in order to promote this social inclusion. We discovered that the app can be used as a support to map locations and initiatives, to gather data, as a support in communication, and most importantly after you have Community Champions, not as a means to find them.

What our customer thought

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