European Experts' Meeting

Anywhere in Europe sport acts as a mediator in values as team work and solidarity, fairness and tolerance. In particular, children find access to social competence through sport Integration of unprivileged people as well as willingness to take responsibility for others - these are very important issues for all children and youth.

Greifswald wants to exchange ideas with its sister cities to collect experiences, for example, what is the situation in other countries; what kind of methods the partners use and what are their "best practice" examples. Therefore Greifswald's sister cities are invited to take part in an experts' meeting on "Education through Sport" in Greifswald, on 7-11 November 2004. Representatives of schools, sportsmen and youth from Kotka (Finland), Osnabriick (Germany), Lund (Sweden) and Hamar as well as from Goleniow and Szczecin (Poland) are coming to Greifswald to learn from each other.

Numerous institutions, departments, associations and the Greifswald University are involved in preparing the meeting. The participants are going to work in several small working groups on the organisation of school sport, leisure and the integration of physical activities in schools additionally to sport lessons. Special emphasis is put to educational values of sport such as e.g. fair play and team spirit, as well as to possibilities of cooperation between educational and sport institutions. Sport at schools is to bring up a balanced relation between mental and physical activities.

The conference also aims at improving cooperation between the municipality's different departments, schools and associations. Another dimension of the meeting is the approach to the idea of "Europe". With the painting of the map of Europe on the school yard, a Europe quiz and children carrying 25 flags of the EU member states, the schoolchildren can experience the European citizenship.

With the European experts' meeting Greifswald's international office wants to start a multilateral exchange. Long lasting relations and cooperation among these experts is to be prolonged on the Internet forum and through individual contacts.