Delegates from the member states of the European Union along with the European Commission Secretariat exchanged views on the progress, outputs and results of the European Union and Council of Europe’s co-operation programmes.

Participants showed great enthusiasm when the new project "ALL IN – Towards gender balance in sport" was presented, and were eager to start working on it!

The 7th World Conference of the International Working Group on Women and sport was a great opportunity to promote the ALL IN project, to network and to meet new potential partners. ALL IN was presented during:

 the Regional meeting “Europe”, facilitated by ENGSO, where details of the Council of Europe’s current and forthcoming initiatives within the area of gender equality were given;

 the side event titled « Gender equality and female empowerment in global sport policy », hosted by UNESCO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and Women Sport International (WSI), during which indicators on gender equality in sport and the possible establishment of a Global observatory for women in sport were discussed.

The kick-off meeting and first experts’ workshop of the ALL IN project took place on 31 May and 1 June at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Together with 30 experts and partners, the first steps towards the development of the project’s key activities and materials were made:

 data collection process

 awareness-raising materials

 toolkit on gender mainstreaming in sport

 online library of resources and practices on gender equality and gender mainstreaming in sport

The Second experts’ workshop took place in Zagreb on October 23-24, 2018. During the meeting, the participants discussed the final details of the data collection campaign, including the content of the questionnaires, the role of the partner countries and the preparation of the Regional seminars that will serve as training sessions prior to the launch of the campaign. In addition, discussions on the other outcomes of ALL IN were discussed, particularly on the capacity building materials and how to promote them and raise awareness about gender equality in sports.

A conference entitled “Breaking the cycle of inequality in sport - by fixing gender balance in leadership and preventing violence against women” was held in Zagreb on 25 October 2018, organised by the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport, under the Croatian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

On November 30th, 2018, the ALL IN training team met in Brussels to organise the three Regional training seminars in preparation to the launch of the data collection campaign.

They discussed and prepared the content and flow of each seminar, adapting it to the specific needs of each group of countries, which were identified during the Second experts’ workshop, held in October in Zagreb

Sofia hosted the first Regional Training seminar, bringing together the national coordinators of the data collection campaign and policy makers from Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Lithuania, Montenegro and Serbia. The seminar aimed at: 

 providing knowledge and skills on gender equality in sport, gender mainstreaming and on developing evidence-based policies and strategies

  providing the national coordinators with practical information on how to launch and follow the data collection campaign

The second Regional training seminar brought together the national coordinators and policy-makers in the field of sport from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France and The Netherlands. The practice-oriented sessions and activities focused on:  

 gaining competencies and knowledge on gender equality in sport, especially in the development of policies and gender equality plans

 implementing the data collection campaign, which has been launched at the beginning of March

At the third and last Regional training seminar, the participants, coming from Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Israel, Portugal and Spain, had the opportunity to assist to presentations and engage in discussions on topics related to gender equality in sports, such as:

 how to incorporate a gender mainstreaming perspective in public policies or

 how to make sport organisations more gender sensitive

A last session was dedicated to the data collection campaign and provided the national coordinators with practical information and guidelines on the process.