On November 26, 2022, in Sofia, Bulgaria, a local sports event under the ONE GOAL initiative was held, in which more than 30 girls and women – athletes and coaches in different sports – took part. During the event, theoretical and practical sessions were held, in which topics such as practical knowledge and skills, the necessary practice and qualification needed to practice women’s football, methods and practices for the promotion of female football coaches, the promotion of physical and technical qualities of female football players, contemporary role models in women’s football and effective psychological methods and techniques for working with adolescents, were discussed.
The event was held with the support of the “Football and Tennis” department at the “Vasil Levski” National Sports Academy with the participation of highly qualified and experienced football coaches, such as Prof. Lachezar Dimitrov, member of the Public Council of the Bulgarian Football Union, Valentina Gospodinova – senior coach of FC “NSA” /women/ and Assoc. Prof. Kornelia Naydenova – coach of the goalkeepers in the women’s team of Bulgaria and NSA.
The ONE GOAL project aims to enhance all around skills of women football coaches and thus help them strengthen their future employability and popularize the idea of increased participation of girls in sports. The ONE GOAL project is co-funded by the European Union and is a pilot project in the field of sports, focused on educational exchange and mobility in sports.
During the practical part, the security protocols developed within the framework of the #SafeSPORTevent initiative were also tested. #SafeSPORTevent project comes in very challenging times for Europe and the World when safety and security are crucial and the sport sector is not an exception. #SafeSPORTevent is an Erasmus+ co-funded initiative that aims to protect athletes, officials and fans, participating in sport events, from health and safety hazards by improving training and competition conditions and especially during forcemajor security threads that need to be handled by specific security protocols. The project developed skills and knowledge of sport managers, volunteers and administrators through educational mobilities in order to empower them to co-create and use specific protocols for safety and security, tailored for sport events and gatherings of huge groups of people in sport environment. Through increased educational possibilities in the field of safety and security in sport, #SafeSPORTevent project ensures positive change in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey as direct project beneficiaries, but also all over Europe as project deliverables – practical handbook and checklists are freely shared with the sport community through the project webpage: http://www.safesportevent.net.
SafeSPORTevent 