On the road to next year’s European Youth Olympic Festival competitions, the EOC is creating and launching an Olympic education project targeted towards the teams preparing for these games.

The aim of this project is to strengthen Olympic values, in line with Recommendation 22 of Olympic Agenda 2020 (Spread Olympic values-based education).

The EYOF education programme will be implemented in two steps. First, each NOC will need to choose an athlete ambassador, who will be educated online by the EOC Olympic Culture and Legacy Commission jointly with the EOC Athlete’s Commission.

These NOC athlete ambassadors will then educate their own participating athletes prior their journey to the EYOF.

This two-step process is designed to tackle the language challenge and to secure that all participating athletes have a discussion partner that is close by, and who they can easily talk with and understand.

An NOC’s chosen athlete ambassador will need good English and human skills. And athletes who have been YOG athlete ambassadors are to be preferred, as they already have a good pre-understanding of what is required from athletes’ ambassadors.

For the Erzurum 2017 winter EYOF NOCs are invited to send in the name of their athlete ambassador by 14th October.

These ambassadors will be greeted by the EOC Olympic Culture and Legacy Commission and invited to a Facebook group.

On 8th of December the virtual education will take place, when the Ambassadors will be guided in the use of some facilitation tools in order to help discussions.

After the virtual education session the Ambassadors will be encouraged to schedule discussions with the teams. Each NOC should help this kind of contact to happen. The process will be followed, and help provided mainly using Facebook as the communication channel.

At the EYOF in Erzurum, the EOC Olympic Culture and Legacy Commission members together with the EOC Athletes Commission members will continue discussions and education with the athletes.

The same procedure will apply for the Summer EYOF pilot education project, for which the names of future athlete ambassadors should be sent to the EOC headquarters by 30 March 2017.