SportaMundi is committed to making sport accessible to everyone. Find out more about the personal motivation of founder Bruno D'Hulster in this short interview with LITA.
How did your idea originate ?
SportKompas has been around for more than 10 years, but after the completion of the scientific research in 2007, it did not immediately find a way to reach all children. I came into contact with Kristof De Mey of UGent 4 years ago and found this a very valuable project to support. I saw the potential and the great positive impact that the SportKompas had in it and felt that something really had to be done about it.
Can you tell us more about the problem to which you offer an answer?
We see a decreasing trend in the motor skills and fitness of the youth. With the rise of computers and smartphones, and all kinds of games and social media, children move much less. Older teachers often tell me that they have seen children's motor skills decline over the last 15 years. "Only 4 out of 20 pupils can catch a ball", they tell me. By sitting more behind a screen, children generally get outside less to play together and get to know each other better.
How does your social enterprise offer a solution to this problem?
By getting more children to play sports and exercise. By a well-founded sports choice, children will be able to keep up their sport longer. In addition, SportKompas is also a key to social integration: if you can do something well, you will be accepted more quickly in the group. By involving local sports clubs and stimulating children to register, they can also make new friends.
We offer SportKompas through the schools to reach every child, especially those who need it most. Through digital tools we learn a lot about the physical condition and what is going on with the youth. Based on the collected data we can make adjustments and measure the impact. We provide the Policy, the teachers, the parents and the children with targeted information.
We realize this together with Sport Vlaanderen, MOEV and Sportwerk Vlaanderen. SportKompas and the Movement Tracking System is universal and scalable, and can therefore also be replicated in other countries (currently the SportKompas is already in use in Singapore and the Netherlands). So there is a lot of potential in it.
What is concretely your positive impact on society?
Exercise and sports are an important basis for both physical and mental health. But also for stimulating self-confidence and social integration sports are a very important factor. We want to give new generations the foundations for a healthier society.
In addition, SportKompas makes it possible to collect a large amount of relevant data that is very useful for scientific research and as information on which to base policy decisions. If, for example, our data shows that there are a lot of children who would like to climb in a certain municipality, but there is no climbing gym there, something can be done about it.
Which event or moment will you always remember?
Not one specific event occurs to me, but at every SportKompas moment I see enthusiastic children discovering themselves. "Hey, I'm good at that!", "I like that sport!", I often hear. Offering children this opportunity, to develop themselves in a sportive and social way, that gives a lot of satisfaction. That's what we do it for!
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