PROLead project is aimed primarily at improving dual career opportunities for professional athletes through the provision of tailored leadership training for current and retired athletes. By encouraging athletes to participate in informal tailored education and training, it will assist them with their career transition both directly and by encouraging athletes to re-engage with education and expand their horizons from solely focussing on their sport.
The project has three main phases:
- To review current offer of leadership education for athletes across Europe and identify good practices for teaching leadership to players.
- To create and deliver a European-wide one-year leadership education course for over 30 player association staff and volunteers to teach them leadership and to empower and inform them how to set up a national leadership programme for their players.
- To create and deliver 7 national leadership courses for sports players in 6 different countries.
By improving the leadership skills of player association staff who will be responsible for delivering the national projects, the project will help to improve the skills levels of player associations thereby improving their ability to lead their members as well as the quality of services they offer to support athletes.
Project will be coordinated by European Elite Athletes Association (EU Athletes) and include German Sport University Cologne and 8 athlete associations and unions from different sports and countries as partners. Over 36 months, the project will hold 9 European meetings (8 transnational project meetings and 1 multiplier sport event) and several national multiplier sport events taking place in UK, France, Ireland, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
Outputs of the project will also include Written Report: Desktop research and literature review of leadership education for athletes and Practical Guide for Player Associations on how to design and deliver successful leadership programmes.
PROLead project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme, started in January 2020 and will continue until the end of 2022.
