In the period 27.02 – 02.03.2023 in Sofia, Bulgaria has been held the first partner meeting of the initiative SMS – Strong Mind for Success.
#SMS is an Erasmus Plus co-funded initiative aiming to build capacity in sport organizations nowadays in the field of mental care awareness and care towards youth athletes.  Strong Mind for Success project will deliver innovative education on how mental health can contribute for the successful development of young football players in Bulgaria, Italy and Slovenia. During the international meeting the partners had the chance to visit National Sports Academy “Vassil Levski” and National Football Base in Boyana.

SMS project will use the knowledge gathered from the results of the objectives and policies from the European Action Plans on Mental Health and will focus on educating young football players on mental health awareness. The target group are youth players (13 – 17), male and female as this age parameter is crucial for the psychological development of the athletes. The relevance and need of such project are supported by the scarcity of data not on what is the effect of sport on mental health, but rather the opposite. During the project will be analysed as well the aspects on how can we use mental health in order to prepare the players mentally and produce quality performance on the field and hopefully on the professional level. With the present project, the consortium aims to further develop the skills of managers as well on how to approach the mental aspects of their players, hopefully acquire the services of more mental health experts and introduce a more holistic approach to football preparation.

Main project outputs:

• Online platform on the importance of addressing mental health in the sport;
• Practical phase of development of new project ideas through the project lifetime.
• Implementing quality educational and research activities focused on the development of mental health amongst youth football players;

Duration: 24 months

Partnership: 3 different EU countries – experienced organizations in the field of sport with know-how of project management that they can transfer in the project lifetime – Bulgarian sports development association (coordinator) L’ORMA from Italy and sport club Endorfin from Slovenia.