Traditional Sport Games for All

Health Life Academy Association in partnership with Association Europeenne De Jeux Et Sports Traditionnels (The European Association for Traditional Sports and Games) and Istarski Pljočkarski Savez (IPS) has established cooperation in order to develop new forms of sport programs related to traditional sports by connecting different age groups and diverse level of physical and intellectual development through traditional values, culture and sport.
The main project idea is general popularization and promotion of traditional activities, sports and culture for people of all ages and levels of physical and mental ability.
The general objective of the project is to promote physical activity through sports programs related to traditional games and culture and thus establish new exercising methods that will encourage international and intergenerational cooperation, and raise public awareness of the importance social inclusion. Project seeks to promote equal opportunities and access to all persons (including persons with disabilities) for participating in sport activities. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of providing sport activities that are structured in a way that enable engagement of all participants by fulfilling their basic psychological and physical needs.
Sports recreation is of exceptional value because of its principles which are based primarily on the adaptation of all sports facilities, physical activity and exercise to individuals, their needs and capabilities. Sport and physical activity are extremely stimulating for the purpose of social inclusion of children and people with disabilities through involvement in sports and recreational activities. When it comes to health of persons, especially children and people with disabilities, proper physical activity is irreplaceable. Also, sport activities connect people from all over the world by providing a platform where everyone can share their cultural values and tradition.
Specific objectives include:
– Developing and integrating new sport programs consisted of existing rules and adaptive rules that would make sport activities accessible to everyone;
– Establishment of international platform for exchanging cultural knowledge and traditional values;
– Increasing participation of young people in traditional sports and social inclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities;

The basic idea is to make several adjustments to the existing rules of traditional sports to make them more challenging and accessible to wider community.
New sport activities would contain of bases of popular traditional sports with few adaptations which will attract young people in participating but also facilitate access to other participants as well. New ways of practice of physical activity relate to adding additional rules and assets in order to make the sports more dynamic and thus more attractive to young people while maintaining the existing core rules of the game.
Activities in new sport should be defined within simple rules so it can be understandable and reachable to all participants (young, old, men, women, children, persons with disabilities etc.). Furthermore, when creating innovative sport, physical requirements should be at a level that allows for the participation of wider population. Balance in terms of activity dynamics (it must not be too intense and challenging) and mental challenge (not to complicated) should be taken into account in order to make the sport accessible.
Also, an educational program will be organized as part of the project to popularize traditional sports games and the importance of sports and physical activity, through an intergenerational dialogue. The goal of the educational program and intergenerational dialogue is the exchange of knowledge and experiences that will be applicable as innovative solutions in popularization of traditional sports among young people.
Traditional Sport Games for All will be implemented through following main activities:
– Defining traditional sport games – it could be either one sport with modified and adapted rules, several traditional sports combined into a one unique, or mix of both;
– Sport rules adaptations – mainly focused on adapting current rules as well as on defining additional rules in order to make sport activities more accessible to general population;
– Workshop and Symposium – educational component, exchange of experiences through intergenerational dialogue;
Lastly, taking into account that newly created traditional sport should be accessible for persons with disabilities as well, adaptations should definitely allow application of the highest degree of inclusion where both persons with and without disability can engage in sport activity together at the same time. Such rules could address team composition, joint action and more.

New traditional sport activities will not have age limit, specific requirements or will be addressed to specific group of participants. The whole concept of innovative traditional sport is to make it accessible for all. Only with that approach the project could have the full impact.
However, main typology of participants to whom sport activities are addressed are young people and elderly. There is no distinction in gender or race as it needs to be accessible to all.
If needed, traditional sport games and rule adaptations can be defined/modified in a way to match all the necessary requirements to a specific target group.

Exchange of knowledge and experience of traditional sports will be fulfilled with the guidance from Association Europeenne De Jeux Et Sports Traditionnels (The European Association for Traditional Sports and Games) who already has more than one hundred members, including Istarski Pljočarski Savez (IPS). Associated organizations involved in traditional sports can guarantee the best approach in raising the level of quality of sports activities as well as understanding what are the best ways to develop and promote traditional sports. General objective will be met by enabling collaboration and communication between organisation Coordinator and Partner organisations in joint work in the adaptation of traditional sports.

For the implementation of the sport activity, it is required to form a team of experts who have the knowledge and experience in the fields of sport, social inclusion, culture and traditional sports. There should be at least 2 experts in each mentioned field as well as a team of young coaches and associates who will contribute to the added value of the project by becoming carriers of new knowledge about traditional sports, culture and social inclusion.
In terms of goods, traditional sport games usually do not require high costs for props or special playing conditions such as specially arranged sports fields, gyms etc.

Since the project specific objective is addressed to defining traditional sport games it would be beneficiary for the project to obtain information on traditional sports games played in the partner region or on national level. There is a possibility that certain traditional sports from different partner regions are similar which would be useful information in narrowing down the selection of traditional sports games to be implemented in the project.
Furthermore, project objective includes making rule adjustments to the sport activity in order to make it reachable. Therefore, including various experiences on the topic of adaptive sport would be highly beneficiary.
For example, Health Life Academy has implemented Istrian traditional sport game called Pljočkanje. The basic rule of the game is that teams take turn in throwing either disks towards the small ball called “bula” or “pallino”. Player/team who’s disk is the closest to the “bula” wins. Depending on the team size, each player can have/throw 1-3 disks. In order to make it more accessible to wider community, few rule adjustments were made. Instead of throwing disks towards “bula”, the discs need to be thrown into the hoop on the floor and for each disc that lands in the hoop player/team receives a point.