EPSI Executive Director Alberto Bichi in his final year statement analyses activities carried on by our network in 2020, with an eye towards next year opportunities for the sport and vitality ecosystem.
When a year comes to an end, it is time to make analysis and summaries of what has been done in the previous 12 months. This 2020 has been a challenging year for our society and, most importantly, for the sports and healthy life style ecosystem that we represent in Europe, with COVID-19 crisis influencing our lives in a totally unpredictable manner. But when a crisis hit, it force us to reinvent ourselves, overcome new obstacle and turn uncertainties into opportunities.
What comes out from this 2020 is, first of all, the importance of innovation, with the powerful appearance of many digital tools in our lives, that have been helping to reduce social distancing in our everyday’s activities and contributed to promoting the relevance of sport in our societies. The #BeActiveAtHome campaign launched by the EU Commission is a perfect example of how technology can be a powerful instrument to continuepromoting sport at many levels.
The European Platform for Sport Innovation raison d’être, not by chance, is striving for a more innovation-friendly environment for the EU sports and healthy life style ecosystem and along the lines of our “mission statement” we have methodically continued to deliver on the most relevant chapters i.e.
- growing our community with the acquisition of some 41 new members coming from both private but now also, most importantly from PUBLIC background, such as municipalities and national ministries.
- engineered and shaped a very important number of new project ideas with the compilation of our members “concept notes”, being at the forefront of the sport innovation, as well as submitted over 25 new project ideas and finally received grants for 5 of them.
- promoted the relevance of sport with the publication of several potion papers and throughout the different political geographical dimensions European, national, municipal as well as regional with the support of ClusSport.
- And finally started to orchestrate numerous business matches amongst our members as well as with several neighbouring sectors so as to ensure economic growth, commercial results and continue delivering added value for all our members.
While thanking EPSI team, Strategic Partners and EPSI members for another successful year, let me reassure you all that we shall continue to deliver in 2021: we are determined more than ever to continue pushing for the relevance of sport and sport innovation in Europe. We are EPSI: and #InnovateSport is our goal!
Alberto Bichi, EPSI Executive Director