Project

About our project

Objectives

Equally on the way to professional player

Generally, in the sport of ice hockey, male players are presented with more chances to reach a professional level in their career. Due to these inequalities, female players are more likely to drop out from the U14 and U16 age groups (that is between the age of 12 and 16), because they cannot play with boys anymore. Hence, the main goal of our project is to close this gap and create equal opportunities for girls who decide to start to play this game. The project not only focuses on the players, but also puts a large emphasis on all involved parties in women’s ice hockey, such as coaches, managers and game officials.

The project’s main idea revolves around the following ideology: “It’s not just about the on and off ice hockey training for the girls, but also improving the supporting staff (coaches, leaders, trainers, volunteers) to be better prepared to help young girls and attract more children to the program.”

Equal opportunities

The project can be a great addition to support the ice hockey world in closing the gender-based gap, by helping female players to stay in the sport and get the same opportunities as men.

More media and publicity should be involved to emphasize that our female athletes do the same or sometimes more to achieve their goals in ice hockey. The workshops and seminars are preparing and teaching all women’s ice hockey participants how to deal with the media and how their sport can get more attention from the media.

The goal is to educate all participants to create a safe and attractive environment where girls can play ice hockey. If the athletes feel they have the same treatment and opportunities than their male peers, they can become more confident, which in turn will improve their performance. Higher level hockey in turn can get more attention, which ultimately creates more interest bringing even more athletes and creating more opportunities. Therefore, we believe women’s hockey in Europe is in a state where it just needs an initial push, and then it will grow on its own. The mission of this project is to help all participating countries take the first step in providing girls these opportunities and teach them that it is worth it to empower young girls, because they will become the leaders of the future.

All programs, seminars and education materials of the project are based on equality in ice hockey. These events are created to educate and show to the sport world that ice hockey must not discriminate gender sensitive. If these young athletes and their support staff will learn the best practices and bring them back to their countries, this philosophy can reach many people and the project can reach its main goal.

Innovative aspects

Integrated top-down approach

In order to successfully implement the project and achieve our objectives, we must obtain support and backing from the target groups which influence each other. However, influence flow is more intensive in the top-down direction.

The project involves strategic integrated actions, subsequently building on each other, to get the whole ice hockey environment working into the direction of good governance and mitigating areas affected by the lack of it. In the project direct approach is used, focusing on raising awareness among all stakeholders, while providing tools and practical education to promote action on the federation level which will influence other sub-systems and members at other levels.

The dissemination process also follows the top-down approach to increase the reach of the important messages of the EWIHC project through established communication channels: disseminated through federations to target audiences, media and clubs, and from clubs then to their target audiences.

Action oriented, practical & universal

All the intellectual outputs will be developed by following the AIDA model (Attention - Interest - Demand - Action). These materials will be used to raise awareness and increase interest in the topic, educate, encourage discussion and action towards creating a well-governed and thus well-functioning organization and the whole environment not only during the lifetime of the EWIHC project, but also in the future. Practical trainings are also incorporated to bring theory into practice and therefore transform the raised awareness into concrete action and tangible results. Project Guide “Women in ice hockey sport” will be free of charge worldwide available and applicable.

The EWIHC project approach and most of the materials to be produced through the project will be universal and thus applicable with only minor modifications for sport bodies in other women sport disciplines aiming to improve the governance in their environment, as well as the policy makers at the national and the EU levels.

Technologically advanced & paperless

During the course of the project the latest technologies will be used and web services to ensure the successful and timely task completion and overall implementation. Project partners and associate partners will use tools to exchange files, effectively and efficiently communicate at zero cost, create graphics and closely manage the project itself. Using these tools daily will also develop each federation’s staff capabilities to manage their other future projects more effectively.

To facilitate the dissemination of the intellectual outputs, they will be prepared in universal electronic formats, enabling effortless sharing using the power of the web, social media networks and reading on all the common electronic devices. This will assure the broad dissemination of the project results and the reach of a wide audience through the EWIHC website, the EWIHC project social media accounts and project partner’s own social media accounts. The questionnaires will be developed in electronic format by using the web services, facilitating participation and the data collection and analysis process.

All of the above will not only increase effectiveness and efficiency and enable higher impact at lower costs, but also follows the principles of paperless administration with economic and environmental benefits.

Interdisciplinary

The EWIHC project will use an interdisciplinary mix of knowledge, experience and expertise from various fields: sport, training, sport psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, management, marketing and public relations, finance, risk management, strategic planning and other to meet its objectives.

By including experts from various fields and environments in the development of the project itself, as well as addressing stakeholders from different levels and educating them with interdisciplinary topics, a holistic approach is encouraged to improve all the key areas that will support the improvement of the level of good governance through the whole ice hockey community.

EU added value

Promotion of good leadership and governance as one of first point in women’s hockey development has been outlined as one of the key areas to ensure the integrity of sport and maintain transparency and fairness for all sportspeople and athletic organizations across the EU.

The Ice Hockey Federations (IHFs) in the project have already established good relations, due to common societal aspects (culture, similar languages, traditions), history and geographical vicinity, but unfortunately, they also face similar challenges: the vicious circle of causes and effects slowing their development efforts and resulting in continuously growing gap in comparison to other hockey nations.

The IHFs in the project have a long tradition of cooperation in competitions, the organization of tournaments and training camps, and other collaborations. The federations have cooperated before in different women’s program, supported and co-funded by the International Ice Hockey Federation, where multi-national management board of representatives from each nation has been established. The established competition and cooperation present a framework, enabling the federations to jointly and more effectively address common challenges.

By implementing the project internationally, the countries which share a hockey region, sport-related employment and the player market, will be able to improve their ice hockey environment to the benefit of all stakeholders: sport managers, coaches, game officials, and most importantly the women players in the region.

The EWIHC project will enable the federations’ access to international experts in various fields, knowledge and capacity building programs, which would not be possible and affordable to any of the federations without the project cooperation. The more comprehensive international project will enable the federations and their members to address their inabilities more effectively in order to make more concrete steps towards building their capacities and their role in the women’s ice hockey development framework.

More concretely, the long-term benefits from empowered and better governed federations are expected to spill over through the international hockey community, with the federations themselves becoming more important parties in the dialogue with the IIHF when demanding increase of transparency, integrity, inclusivity, and equal opportunities for all. The project will also empower individual participants. For example, game officials from all the project partner countries will be able to become candidates to work at world championships due to the newly gained knowledge and experience also in practice not just in theory.

The international aspect of the project will build the project’s credibility in the eyes of all stakeholders (clubs, coaches, players, media), including the International Ice Hockey Federation, National Olympic Committees, national sport federations as well as the governmental officials, when promoting and disseminating the project outcomes, while the project partners will benefit from an increase in credibility as well. The international aspect of the project will boost the dissemination of intellectual outputs in project partner countries and worldwide toward IIHF Women’s Committee as well and attract attention from international ice hockey community that can also gain advantages from the project outputs.

The staff involved in implementation of the project as well as all participants will benefit from inter-cultural exchange and increased mutual understanding. All project partners work in different national environments and have acquired certain organizational knowledge and experience, which should and will be exchanged between the partners on seminars and other events. All the federations involved are humble in their realization that they are able to learn from each other in order to improve their own performance regarding women’s ice hockey and equality in sport.

The topics of equality in sport, social inclusion of female ice hockey player, athletes’ nutrition, match-fixing and anti-doping as important parts of integrity in sports as well as intolerance and discrimination and physical activity are global problems and therefore cannot be faced and tackled only in a single country. By the cooperation of organizations from 15 different European countries a bigger network will be established to exchange experiences and to find better and quicker solutions.

The EWIHC project combines sport and play with other non-sport components to enhance their effectiveness. Such programs embody the best values of sport while upholding the quality, equality, and integrity of the sport experience. They are delivered in an integrated manner with other local, regional, and national development and peace initiatives so that they are mutually reinforcing.

We aim to bring children and girls that love hockey, from all sides of the partner countries, to come together and play ice hockey. Through mutual participation in sport, and careful guidance from the leaders of youth that will be trained, these girls will begin to:

The international nature of partnership encourages a more serious approach to the project, while monitoring between the international partners will increase each partner’s participation and motivation. By sharing and considering different international views we believe the partnership will come up with better solutions and approaches during the implementation of the project.

All the partners firmly believe that the lack of equality and development of women’s ice hockey can and should only be addressed through close international cooperation between them, since they all share the same issues and consequences. By approaching them in a systematic way, the project will be building the capacity of the network to cooperate in solving other common issues in the future and set out a good example of what all ice hockey federations with a strong determination can achieve together for the world of women’s ice hockey.