The mid-term meeting for the Hopasus project took place from the 24th to the 26th of March in Šabac, Serbia. The partners of the project, coming from Lithuania (Tavo Europa), Romania (UNEFS), Bulgaria (WalkTogether) and Serbia (SDCS) met in the welcoming Serbian city of Šabac, around one hour by car from Belgrade. The first day of the meeting started with a session led by UNEFS: all the partners were guided through a review of the timeline of the project, its budget and each partners responsibilities, alongside a summary of future activities to be implemented. The lead was then taken by SDCS, who presented the results, analysis and conclusions related to the research previously conducted in all the partners countries on youth engagement with sports and videogames. After a quick coffee break, UNEFS as the coordinator of the project proceeded to introduce the partners to the country report template. Later on, all the partners joined a session of exchange of good practices related to the production of educational material for the project, a session that ended with the definition of the strategies that will be adopted by each partner in the process. After lunch a session on video production for dissemination was organized by SDCS: the partner gathered to decide the script for the videos, including the questions to interview each other on the current state of the project and its implementation. The second day of the project was opened by a workshop organized by SDCS in a local sport club: the project’s mascot, Hopasus Robot, appeared during the children’ training encouraging them to exercise and animating the training. The last sessions of the meeting focused on the communication&media strategy for the project and on the future activities to be implemented.
Overall, the meeting was a great opportunity for all the partners to update each other on the activities implemented, to evaluate and learn from them; it was a moment of exchange of good practices, as well a great way to increase the focus on the next steps of the project and their implementation.