Sport for prevention of extremism in Youth

After two years of research, training and implementation, it is now time to wrap-up.

The SPEY Final conference will be the last occasion to share about the project findings, barriers faced, and lessons learnt. We will gather policy makers, youth and sport experts and a more generic audience. The conference will give participants interesting insights on how much sport can do to strengthen formal and non-formal education and to prevent extremism in Youth.

This conference will also be a dissemination and communication event. We will put forward the role of each partner in the consortium, but more importantly, use the project findings to gather elected officials, academic experts, European’s institution representatives and civil society advocacy groups and have their opinion on the role of sport as a tool to prevent extremism in youth.

Agenda

09.30 - Registration of the participants

09.50 - Inauguration of the Conference by the host organization Sport and Citizenship

10.00 - Welcoming words from Gerard Esteva i Viladecans, president of Union of Sportive Federations of Catalonia, Spain (project coordinator entity)

10.15 - Priorities of EU Sport policy and EU sport funding

Speaker: Marisa Fernandez Esteban, Deputy head of the Sport unit, European Commission (Belgium)

10.30 - 10.45 Presentation of the SPEY project

Speaker: Milena de Murga, Psychologist and criminologist, head of International and Social Action departments of the Union of Catalan Sports Federations (Spain). Co-creator and coordinator of the SPEY project.

10.45 - SPEY Sport Programme. Short documentary about the project

Speaker: Alla Krinitsyna, Social psychologist, project manager, Union of Sportive Federations of Catalonia (Spain)

11.00 - Coffee break

11.20 - SPEY project Outcomes

Speaker: Roberto M. Lobato, PhD in Social Psychology, Professor at the Marbella International University Center (Spain).

11.35 - Preventing and countering radicalization through sport

Speaker: Daniel Mateu, Specialist in Analysis of Jihadist terrorism, Insurgencies, and Radical Movements, researcher of the University of Cordoba (Spain). Co-creator of the SPEY project.

11.50 - Terrorism and sport

Speaker: Carlos Igualada, Director of the International Observatory of Studies on Terrorism (OIET).

12.10 - Questions from the audience and seminar conclusions

12.30 - 14.00 Lunch for the participants

About SPEY project:

The SPEY project, led by UFEC, combines sports practice and transversal skills to minimise the factors that intervene in the process of youth radicalisation. It seeks to improve integration channels for youngsters at-risk of exclusion and keeps gender-based perspective crosswise throughout the project. The project is focused on reaching two general objectives:

1. To develop a sports program to prevent the process of adopting all types of violent ideas and behaviours among youth.

2. To develop measuring tools of the process of radicalisation and its prevention through practical programs.