The recent letter from Antonio Tajani, the President of the European Parliament, has added weight and encouragement for EuropeActive to continue along its pathway to develop the systems and processes to make sure that fitness professionals have the future skills and qualifications to support the growth of the sector.
20th to 22nd March 2017, representatives of the active leisure sector, EuropeActive and EC-OE hold a very fruitful and informative meeting in Mijoux, France. The SIQAF task force invited for the 3rd meeting experts on referencing national qualifications to the Swiss National Qualification Framework. The expert consultations where a great opportunity to gain first hand experiences on how to reference qualifications to a NQF. In addition, the Swiss consistency examiner for the NQF gave his approach and perspective on the process.
This week, the European Qualification framework (EQF) project has taken some big steps towards an International Sector Qualification Framework for Active Leisure. On Wednesday 16 November, the SIQAF consortium consisting of representatives from the Outdoor (EC-OE) and the fitness sector (EuropeActive) met for the second task force meeting in Athens.
Building on the agreement signed in 2012 between EuropeActive and the European Confederation of Outdoor Employers (EC-OE) to establish the Active Leisure Alliance this is being extended to develop a Sector Skills Alliance. At the International Standards Meeting in Athens Julian Berriman, Director of Professional Standards Committee for EuropeActive and Herman Smulders, President of EC-OE signed a new memorandum of cooperation.
Through a new European Commission funded action the Active Leisure Alliance (a combination of the fitness and outdoor sectors) is testing the relevance of its qualifications and standards against the European Qualification Framework (EQF). The project, with the acronym of “SIQAF” is part of the Erasmus+ Programme in Key Action 3 which looks to reform initiatives for policy innovation in the area of recognising international qualifications/frameworks in the context of the EQF.
EuropeActive is pleased to confirm that it has been selected for a new project in the Erasmus+ Programme in Key Action 3 which is looking to reform initiatives for policy innovation in the area of recognising international qualifications/frameworks in the context of the EQF. The project includes the European Confederationof Outdoor Employers (EC-OE) and will take the active leisure sector qualification framework (SQF) through the stages of referencing directly to the EQF.
Under the chairmanship of Sir Graham Watson (EuropeActive President) and Niels Nygaard, the specially appointed High Level Group (HLG) on Grassroots Sport met 5 times in 2015-16 and has now made proposed to European Commissioner Tibor Navracsics 10 key recommendations as their agenda to promote grassroots sport in Europe. These are under the main themes of:
Health Social inclusion Informal learning and skills development Volunteering Economic dimension Sustainable financing Urban planning and infrastructure
EuropeActive is a strategic partner of the European Commission in the European Summit on Digital Innovation for Active & Healthy Ageing 2016, which will take place in Brussels from 5 to 8th December this year. Organized by DG CONNECT in the European Commission, the Summit is going to address issues regarding the unprecedented ageing of Europe and its profound consequences for individuals, businesses, governments, policy-makers and investors. Demographic change constitutes a societal challenge for Europe, but also offers new opportunities for innovation and growth.
