Active Fans Programme

Active Fans Programme

What is Active Fans ?

Active Fans aims to reach people (both men and women) over 35 who would like to get physically active again as well as making lifestyle changes and improving their diets. This programme is being funded by Erasmus+ Sport, coordinated by EFDN and it is delivered in collaboration with nine partners. These project partners are: Fulham FC Foundation, Vitesse Betrokken, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Rangers FC Foundation, Ferencvaros TC, PSV Foundation, Feyenoord Rotterdam, KAA Gent and Valerenga Fotball.

Through this programme, participants get to learn about nutrition as they get more physically active and begin to feel the benefits of weight loss and increased energy. There has been a few clubs and organisations across Europe who have developed methodologies for similar programmes which promote physical activity and a healthy lifestyle for the mentioned target group. Three methodologies that are used for Active Fans are; Football Fans in Training (FFIT), EuroFit and FanActiv. Therefore, the project partners would like to use the experiences from the delivery clubs that have experience with all three different methodologies to evaluate these methodologies, identify the critical success factors of all three methodologies and use the best of the three methodologies to develop a user friendly, cost-effective and innovative methodology that can be used by all interested sport and football clubs in Europe..

This project promotes the aims of the HEPA Guidelines and the true European values of sport and proceeds to increase the awareness in regards to the role of sport in promoting health-enhancing physical activities, social inclusion and equal opportunities. Additionally, the Active Fans project also ensures increased participation in sport, physical activity and voluntary activity of a target group that can be considered hard to reach.
The project objectives have been shaped and agreed via an extensive consultation process with all project partners, informed by the specific challenges faced within each of the individual European territories with regard to sport for all and social inclusion. Through this process, people aged 35 and over were consistently identified as the key demographic target group that needs to be addressed in the near future.

Several social policy outcomes have been identified in order to deliver the highest levels of added value and ensure the maximum impact on European policy objectives in sport. These include enhancing the number of physical activities within the target group, promoting the European guidelines on health-enhancing physical activities (HEPA), enhancing the number of social contacts of local participants and promoting this new innovative football/sport methodology to a wide range of stakeholders in countries all around Europe.