Chapter 1- IntroductionWELCOME- to the process of becoming a GUARDIAN of young people in sports!

Young athletes, coaches, parents, sport clubs and federation representatives, this manual is designed to serve the joint purpose of providing a positive experience for all young people involved in sports. Reaching medals and cups it’s a long process that requires a lot of dedication, sacrifices, hard work, and motivation. However, beyond these achievements, sport serves as a platform where young people experience joy, fun and it helps in their self-esteem and building life values and skills. And this inspirational process of self-development is often interrupted by the presence of various types of violence, discrimination, pressure or forms of abuse. Thus, this manual has been developed by the need to recognize that abuse “it’s not a minor negative behavior”, rather it’s a phenomenon that influences the lives of young people. Sports create families with long-lasting bonding, and as such, sports should be a safe environment for all young people, regardless of their background. So, we invite you to join us in becoming “THE GUARDIANS of young people” by fighting and taking actions against any abuse or violent behavior in sports.

The beginning of the Guardian Manual!Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are in a constant mission of identifying needs, problems, issues and addressing them through different work and actions. That is why organizations and sport clubs from North Macedonia and Serbia have gathered to address and highlight the presence of violence against young people in sports, through the project “WE THE GUARDIANS- Effective practices to safeguarding youth in sports activities”. Firstly, because this topic has not been addressed before and secondly, young people need to witness proper actions and measures that will protect all of them from any abuse during their sports activities. North Macedonia and Serbia have a great number of young people involved in sports clubs and sports structures. In both countries, there have been cases of violence and abusive behaviors taking place in sport events which have broad public attention to the matter.

From the expertise of the consortium, we believe that in order to protect young people from any harm or abuse during sport activities, there should be actions from their sport clubs and federations, who are their “second family” on a daily basis. And one of the internal actions is establishing safeguarding and protection policies, jointly with programs of increasing the internal capacities of sport clubs to respond to violent or negative situations as well as work on preventing them from occurring.

Thus, this manual will provide guidelines and concrete information on how to establish safeguarding and protection policies, jointly with the educational programs and activities that the sport clubs need to follow to prevent and fight violence towards youth in sports. Creating safeguarding policies, guidelines and capacity-building training for sports clubs will be a sustainable step toward providing a safe environment in sports for young people.

The manual content has been developed based on the research that was conducted with young people in sports as part of the project “WE THE GUARDIANS” in North Macedonia and in Serbia. During the desk research, we have gathered information about strategies, practices, existing mechanisms in both countries, regarding violence in sports, as well as the international good practices and initiatives which can serve as examples for this project. The questionnaires filled by 152 young people, have provided us with the facts that violence towards young people in sports exists in North Macedonia and in Serbia, and gives us clear instructions on what are the needs of young people and how can we support them through this manual. Statistics and information from the research are presented in the sections below.

Safeguarding in sports is a process of protecting youth and children from harm by providing a safe space in which they can play sports and be active. And this is the intended achievement of this manual, which would not be developed without the financial support of the European Union, through the program Erasmus +.