ESA Program – Enriched Sport Activities Program

PROGRAMME, KEY ACCTION

The project “ESA – Enriched Sport Activities Program” (project ESA) addresses the objective of social values of sport, in particular health, physical fitness, social inclusion and improvement of sport motivation, by implementing an intervention program to carry out through the involvement of children typically developing and with special needs as well as their parents.

9 partner organizations from Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Croatia, Lithuania, Spain and Germany are involved in creating and establishing a collaboration that will end up in the creation of several outcomes all aims at improving social inclusion, equal opportunities and psycho-physical well being in typical and atypical children through sport and physical activity participation in combination with cognitive tasks oriented to improve executive functions as working memory, planning and inhibition processes in children.

The intervention will carry out through two ways. The first is parents’ involvement and education on cognitive, motivational and social benefits of PA in childhood. The second is children and youths participation in Enriched Sport Activities (ESA) Program; an integrated sport program in which sport activities for typical children, such as soccer, track and field, swimming, handball, swimming and APA for children with special needs will be enriched with cognitive tasks aimed at improving executive functions as working memory, planning and inhibition processes. The age ranging 6-14 years was chosen because children’s physical activity levels are acknowledged to decrease over this stage, but also because this is a critical phase to address precautionary intervention programs aimed at stimulating an active lifestyle able to prevent inactivity.