EFDN Highlights: February 2021

EFDN Highlights: February 2021

As 2021 comes to an end, EFDN invites you to look back on this year’s top activities, projects and news stories. Take a look at some highlights from February.

EFDN CELEBRATED 100 CLUB MEMBERS

In 2014, our founder Hubert Rovers launched the European Football for Development Network in partnership with seven professional football clubs with the aim of creating a European network of community-engaged professional football organisations who use the power of football for social development. Almost seven years later, we were proud to welcome FC Twente from the Netherlands as our 100th official club member.

This was a great new milestone for our organisation, which we celebrated in the following weeks and months with a special #EFDN100 campaign and ‘We are #MorethanFootball’ activities and events. All of these events aimed to promote the social power of football, inspire and empower football organisations to use the social and connecting power of football across Europe, raise awareness of their projects, and contribute to a more inclusive society.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN SCIENCE 2021

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has not just clearly demonstrated the critical role of women in general but also in their jobs as researchers in different stages of the fight against COVID-19, from advancing the knowledge on the virus to developing technics for testing and finally the vaccine against the virus. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic also had a significant negative impact on woman scientists, particularly affecting those at early-career stages, and thus contributing to widening the existing gender gap in science, and revealing the gender disparities in the scientific system, which need to be addressed by new policies, initiatives and mechanisms to support women and girls in science.

EFDN presented its EFDN STEM Programme, member initiatives, as well as female scientists in sport.

SDG STRIKER PROJECT KICKS OFF ONLINE

On 23 February, the organisations participating in the SDG Striker (Scoring Goals for Sustainability) project, met online to officially start the project. SDG Striker is a project coordinated by Ecoserveis (ECO), a non-profit organisation specialised in environment and energy which has been working at the local and environmental level to promote sustainability since 1992 and is a leading reference in energy culture in Spain. The project is funded by the ERASMUS+ Programme of the European Union. Its goal is to increase the organisational capacity for Good Governance in grassroots sports organisations by assisting them to implement and communicate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This will be achieved through ad hoc action at the local level so they can align themselves with European national and local public policy on the SDGs and by developing a joint understanding about best practices before, during and after being tested, and assess their potential for replication across the national Federation and beyond national borders.

MEMBER NEWS

Our member Real Betis Balompié took its environmental project a step further and created a specific group of volunteers for the Forever Green programme.

Legia Foundation organized a Carnival LIVE to help senior citizens as part of GotowiDoPomocy (Got to Help). It is a comprehensive aid campaign in Warsaw providing real, direct help to seniors during the coronavirus outbreak.

NEW MEMBERS

In February, EFDN welcomed new members Foundation of Light and FC Twente.