During the 23rd and 24th of April 2018, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria celebrated the MOVE kick-off meeting, in which all different partners participated – coming from Spain, Lithuania, Portugal, Rumania, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and United Kingdom – in order to create working groups and developing activities proposals to meet project objectives.

The University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), through the Internalization and Cooperation Vice-rectorate, leads this European project in which 10 European entities participate in order to design a new European model of sports volunteering that acts as a social and health promotion agent for society.
The European Commission Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency finances this innovative initiative, under Erasmus+ Sport, with a budget of 351.715,00 euros and a duration of three years.

The project is coordinated by Miguelo Betancor, University professor at the ULPGC, and relies on the participation of a group of experts in different project related areas. In total it is expected that, during the project lifetime, more than 1.500 people and more than 200 sport, educative and social entities from all Europe will get involved.
For Miguelo Betancor, this European initiative is: “an exceptional opportunity to highlight the importance of sports volunteering could have in the future, not only for the promotion of sports and physical education, but also as a social cohesion, community participation and social equity promoter”. “This project was generated through a working network among different public, social, sports, educative and economic entities that will stablish interesting and highly valuable synergies that to impact the quality in the wellbeing of the population.”

According to the words of European experts, external to European Commission that have evaluated the proposal, “MOVE, which is Titled: “European Sports Volunteering for Health promotion, Social inclusion and Equality through sport for all”, brings added value to the European Union as a gathering of different organizations from various European countries and as a developer for a new volunteering model that could be applied throughout Europe.” In addition, is fundamental to highlight the role of youth as the main agents of the project that will act as social and health change actors of society.