3rd Amateur Sports Forum on the future of grassroots sport

In the aftermath of the Corona pandemic and the global crisis it caused, the future of grassroots sport is undergoing a major transformation: youth policies, global sustainability and gender equality are the keys to restructuring the grassroots sport sector, one of the most affected by the isolation imposed by Covid-19 and one of the most disadvantaged in the world.

After a long period of pandemic, energy and even the current war crisis, grassroots sport is heading for very uncertain times, which leads to thinking hard about future possibilities. Best practices of grassroots sport are lived through the hard work in the CSIT, which currently unites dozens of worldwide grassroots sport organisations from more than 50 countries.

The third World Amateur Sport Forum "Sport Impacts All" in Rome focused on the transformation of grassroots sport and was the launch of the CSIT Congress, organised by the International Amateur World Sport Federation CSIT in collaboration with its Italian member association AiCS and supported by the Lazio Region and the Italian Ministry of Sport and Health. The Forum opened with welcoming remarks from IOC President Thomas Bach, which once again underlined the importance of the Forum.

Leading Italian and international sports officials as well as European experts commented on the important topics of youth, green sport and the role of women in sport, and also spoke about the future of the amateur movements after the pandemic. Bruno Molea (President AiCS and CSIT) was on the panel as well as Michele Sciscioli (Ministry of Sport Italy), Vito Cozzoli (President Sport and Health), Giovanni Malagò (President Italian Olympic Committee CONI), Luca Pancalli (President CIP), Luciano Di Fonzo (Head of the Sport Unit of the European Executive Agency for Education, Audiovisual and Culture EACEA) and Ivo Ferriani (President GAISF, the Global Association of International Sports Federations), of which CSIT is a member.

The European project "YOULead" for the training of sports managers was also presented. The YOULead project includes many young and ambitious people, who have already created many international sports events and, above all, different camps. The forum was a great opportunity to showcase their international movements and efforts launched by CSIT in 2018.

The forum also saw the presentation of CSIT's Environmental Sustainability Guidelines to highlight the importance of saving energy and protecting the environment. CSIT will also be going green in the future. The debut of CSIT's major green events will be the CSIT World Sports Games in September 2023 in Cervia, where several thousand participants are expected.

Another major topic was gender equality. The European project "EU MamaNet" was presented at the Forum. Thanks to the support and promotion of AiCS, there will be the first big International Mamanet Festival in Italy in 2023, with more than 1500 women participating.