iCoachKids aimed to improve the experiences of children and young people in sport by facilitating the development of a specialist youth sport workforce. It did so by:-Gathering a solid evidence foundation to inform best practice in youth sport coaching-Providing guidance for coach education providers in how to create suitable learning opportunities for youth coaches-Developing a suite of FREE educational resources for youth sport coaches.iCoachKids was led by Leeds Beckett University and comprised a consortium of leading organisations in coach education such as the International Council for Coaching Excellence, the Hungarian Coaching Association, Sport Ireland-Coaching Ireland, Universidad Europea de Madrid, NOC-NSF, Lithuanian Sport University and the Royal Belgian Football Association. The strength of the consortium laid in the breadth of organisations which included international coaching bodies, national coaching leads, national Olympic committess, universities, coaches associations and sport federations. The project aimed to impact on the following target populations: 1) National coordinating bodies for coach education; 2) VET providers and National Federations 3) Coach Employers 4) Coaches Associations 5) Coach Developers. Along the lifespan of the project a large number of sporting organisations signed memoranda of understanding to become iCoachKids supporters and promote the use of its outputs amongst their members. This include amongst many others: UEFA, FIBA, World Rugby, International Skating Union, Real Madrid Foundation, Special Olympics, Sport England and the German Olympic Committee. Beyond the European Union, other international organisations who have become iCoachKids supporters include the United States Council for Coaching Excellence, Save the Dream Qatar and the Singapore National Youth Sport Institute.To achieve its goals, iCoachKids delivered the following intellectual outputs: 1. Audit report of the children’s coaching workforce in the seven European countries represented in the partnership to better understand its demography and needs.2. Case Study Compilation to capture examples of best practice in the education of children's coaches in VET.3. A European Coaching Children Curriculum to guide organisations wishing to develop coaching qualifications in this area.4. Three Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) for coaches of children covering the curriculum which can be used by VET institutions to facilitate the mass training of children's coaches.5. Study guides to support the three MOOC candidates pre, during and post course.6. Creation of iCoachKids Online Platform to host the MOOCs and serve as a hub and repository of information for the European community of children's coaches. iCoachKids has delivered all the promised intellectual outputs and multiplier events on time and on budget and to an extremely high level of quality. This is proven by the fact that iCoachKids became one of the Erasmus+ flagship projects for the European Commission who regularly highlighted the project’s achievements on their social medial channels and invited iCoachKids to be one of only two projects to be presented at the recent Finnish Presidency Sport Conference in Espoo on 24th September 2019. The strength and impact of the project has also been shown in the awarding of a new Erasmus+ Sport three-year grant to develop iCoachKids Plus, an extension of the original iCoachKids project.By completing and successfully disseminating the project’s intellectual outputs and activities, iCoachKids has also had a significant impact in the education and employability of youth coaches and in the quality of the sporting experiences of children and young people. To date, over 10,000 coaches a month from all over the world have visited our platform and 3,000 coaches have taken the free online training. As the following paragraph shows, these numbers are due to grow exponentially shortly into the hundreds of thousands. In relation to its long-term benefits, the most significant impact of the project has been the birth of a the iCoachKids Global Movement. Dozens of organisations from all over the world have expressed an interest in introducing the project’s philosophy, exemplified in the iCoachKids Pledge (10 Golden Rules for Positive Sport Experiences), and using the FREE resources. Over the last three years, iCoachKids’ participation has been requested at conferences and events across five continents, in countries including the USA, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, China, Singapore, Japan and all over Europe. Requests from organisations and institutions to affiliate to the iCoachKids movement and to run national iCoachKids conferences have poured in. Translations into additional languages such as Portuguese and Chinese are under development as are customisations of the MOOCs for football and ice skating. Without question, iCoachKids is here to stay.

CoachLearn was led by Leeds Beckett University (UK) in conjunction with the International Council for Coaching Excellence (UK), Trainerakademie Köln (Germany), Hungarian Coaching Association (Hungary), Haaga-Helia University (Finland) and NOC*NSF (Netherlands). The project was funded through an Erasmus+ bid (2014 call) under the Strategic Partnerships Action within Key Action 2 – Cooperation and Innovation for Good Practices. It started in October 2014 and was completed in August 2017.Sport coaches are at the front-line of sport development and delivery. Based on previous studies, it was estimated that there could be as many as 5 to 9 million coaches operating across Europe, with a likely reach of somewhere between 50 and 100 million sport participants. The development of a suitably educated coaching workforce has thus been recognised as a priority area at the highest levels of European policy. The 2007 White Paper on Sport, the 2011 Communication on Enhancing the European Dimension of Sport, and the Work Plans for Sport 2011-2014, 2014-2017 and 2017-2020 all highlight the need to review and improve the way coaches are trained. Over the last ten years, the European Coaching Council (the European branch of the International Council for Coaching Excellence) has led a number of initiatives to develop coach education within the Union. These initiatives have reflected the wider changes in the overall education landscape. Notwithstanding this considerable work, a number of key issues remained to be addressed where identified.In order to address the above issues and contribute to enhancing coaches’ learning, mobility and employability, CoachLearn:a)Completed a series of research reports to provide a clear picture of the needs of sport coaches, coach developers (trainers of coaches) and a variety of organisations with a stake in their education, employment and mobility.b)Compiled examples of good practice at a global and European level in relation to systems and frameworks of education, employment and mobility of sports coaches.c)Developed suitable guidance and practical tools to facilitate the adoption and implementation of recognised protocols and systems for Recognised Prior Learning within European Union coach education stakeholdersd)Produced a European Sport Coaching Framework (ESCF) responsive to the needs of coaches and the idiosyncrasies of international, national and sport specific contexts. This Framework is aligned to EQF and the International Sport Coaching Framework, and referenced against other relevant European qualification systems and tools. e)Created implementation tools to support member states and coaching stakeholders evaluate their current coach education systems against clear reference points (European Sport Coaching Framework) and plan for the development of future, enhanced systems. CoachLearn has been disseminated extensively throughout the duration of the project. Members of the working group have presented the intellectual outputs of the project at a multitude of events and conferences in Europe and around the world. These included the USA National Coaching Conference 2015 in West Virginia, the Global Coach Conference 2015 in Finland and 2017 in England, the Global Coaches House 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, the European Network of Sport Education Conference 2015 in Italy and 2017 in Denmark, and the Estonian Presidency Conference on Sport 2017 in Tallinn. Likewise, based on the contribution made by the project research and intellectual outputs, several members of the working group were invited to sit in the Human Resources in Sport Expert Group of the Sport Unit of the European Commission where CoachLearn was amply discussed. The intellectual outputs of the project, and specifically the ESCF and its application tools have been extremely well received by stakeholders in the field of coach education and employment. Feedback from end users had been very positive and the guidance provided in these documents has started to filter into the day to day practices of all those involved in this area of work. Of special significance was the choice of ‘The Role of the Coach’ as the main topic for the current Estonian Presidency of the European Council which was directly influenced by CoachLearn and the ESCF. CoachLearn has therefore fulfilled all the objectives it set out at the project application stage and has had a significant impact at ground level making a major contribution to enhancing sport coaches' learning, mobility and employment through the development. The ESCF has become the recognised reference point across the Union for the development and benchmarking of coach education programmes and coaching systems. Over time, the ESCF will enhance national systems of vocational education and training in sport coaching and create a step change in the way coaches are educated, developed and employed across the European Union.