Latvia, Kekava Municipality Sport Agency – Project Coordinator
Kekava Municipality Sport Agency is founded in 1st February 2009 by Kekava Municipality Council decision. It is a public institution which main aims are: manage municipality sport facilities; provide services that facilitate sport activities; by all means promote healthy lifestyle between community inhabitants especially between youngsters, socially disadvantaged groups, people with disabilities; ensure accessibility of public sport infrastructure to all community members; organize sport activities in municipality etc. Agency provides support to all local sport organizations, clubs not only by supporting them financially but also by organizing non-formal education activities for their leaders, coaches and members. One of the focus groups is school children and seniors. Agency regularly organizes grassroot sport events (nordick walking, running events etc.) and tries to attract to such activities people who have not familiar with physical activities.
Sport Agency has invaluable experience involving local community members into grassroot sport activities. Moreover, Sport Agency organizes different activities in Kekava municipality and supports activities initiated by young people devoted to healthy lifestyle promotion. On a regular basis we are organizing grassroot sport activities in different kind of sports (running, cycling, volleyball, basketball, football etc.). Every year we organize more than 70 different sport events in our municipality involving more than 8000 community inhabitants (there are ~25 thousand inhabitants in total).
Sport Agency was the coordinator of the project “Development and implementation practices of strategies for health-enhancing physical activities in local communities across Europe (DEVHEPA) Grant Agreement Number – 2015-2988/001-001. This is a European project developed within the framework of the ERASMUS + program action Collaborative Partnerships in the Sport field.