The seventh edition of the European Young Olympic Ambassador (EYOA) programme will take place during the Summer European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) in Maribor between 23 and 29 July.
Organised by the European Olympic Committees (EOC) Culture and Education Commission, the EYOA programme aims to promote and strengthen the Olympic values of excellence, friendship, and respect among the young athletes participating at the EYOF.
In recent months the EYOAs, a group that includes multiple Olympians, former EYOF athletes, and sport enthusiasts have been working on creating new ideas for the educational activities that will be organised for athletes during the event.
The programme is led by Nataša Janković, a member of the EOC Culture and Education Commission, and she thanked the EOC for recognising the importance of the EYOAs.
She said: “This is the 7th edition of the EYOA programme created with talented and ambitious young people from all over the Europe. In Maribor we will have 23 Ambassadors who are ready to deliver the programme in the best possible way.
“One of the key features of the EYOA project is the freedom given to ambassadors to create their own programme based on personal experiences and interests. The result of this is that the activities will be organised in a variety of innovative formats, but all focused on the same goal of sharing the Olympic values with young athletes throughout Europe.
“We are thankful that EOC recognises the importance of this, and I am sure we are going to have an amazing programme in Maribor.”
The Ambassadors will run a series of activities at the EYOA Booth in the main Athletes Village during the competition, giving athletes a unique opportunity which is not seen at any other event.
The 23 EYOAs will encourage athletes to go beyond competition, discover the Olympic Movement’s power and to bring the Olympic values closer to everyone in a fun and creative way.
Clea Papaellina, Vice Chair of the EOC Culture and Education Commission who is in charge of education for the programme, said: “Until now we had a series of webinars with EYOAs to prepare them in the best possible way for the upcoming EYOF. We provided EYOAs with important information about Olympism and Olympic values, event organisation, and communication.
“Between webinars they have been working really hard in their small groups which are ideal for brainstorming and collaboration. They created their final team building activities and also found ways on how to attract the attention of athletes and engage them to participate in the programme.
“Our Alumni team also did a great job in leading and mentoring EYOAs and we are also very grateful for the support of our Chair, Jean Michel Brun, Member of the EOC Executive Committee.”
Based at the EYOA Booth in front of the NOC Service Centre, athletes will be able to check out different games such as Scavenger Hunt, Kahoot, Olympic History, True Olympism, Fair Play is Key, Olyvision and more to win unique prizes.
Through the Cultural Day activity, athletes will have a chance to learn about different cultures, traditional games, and customs, while during Integrity Day they will learn more about fair play, prevention of the manipulation of competitions, anti-doping, and financial and business literacy in sport.
Partners from the International Olympic Committee, International Testing Agency, European Fair Play Movement and the Slovenian Olympic Committee have helped deliver the topics surrounding integrity, while the multi-national team of EYOAs have been supported by seven Alumni Ambassadors, who had all participated at a previous EYOF as an EYOA.
The schedule of the activities can be found on this link: https://www.eyof.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/EYOA-Activities-Schedule-Maribor.pdf, while the activities description is here: https://www.eyof.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/A3-Poster_Activities-Description.pdf
Meet European Young Olympic Ambassadors https://www.eyof.org/about-eyoa/2023-summer-eyof-maribor/
