Tony Bass, Europe GAA, Míde Ní Shúilleabháín GAA Sustainability Advisor, Sean Kelly MEP, Cynthia Ni Mhurchu MEP, Jimmy D'Arcy GAA Sustainability Manager, Ernest Kovacs, ACCESS Project Coordinator.
The GAA Green Club Programme was showcased at a recent European Sports and Sustainability event in Brussels. On 14 May sports stakeholders from across Europe gathered in the Roi Badouin stadium in the Belgian capital to mark the end of the successful ACCESS project, which was an Erasmus+ partnership between the GAA, FA Wales, FC Porto, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa) and the project coordinators ACR+ (the Association of Cities and Regions for Sustainable Resource Management). The ACCESS project objective was to encourage collaboration between sports organisations and city authorities to promote circularity, contribute to sustainability and mitigate the environmental impact of sports events.
As the lead partner for Community Engagement within the ACCESS project, the GAA drew on its innovative Green Club programme to develop a new engagement model for European grassroots sports clubs.
This Green Goals five-step plan can be applied across sports and national contexts to promote and facilitate simple and effective sustainability action at club level and has already been adopted and implemented by clubs in ACCESS partner countries Wales and Portugal.
The Brussels event, which was attended by representatives of the Sport Unit at the European Commission, a number of Irish MEPs and Gaelic Games Europe’s Development Officer Tony Bass, was also an opportunity for the GAA to highlight the work being done by its clubs in Ireland to embed best practice in Energy, Waste, Water, Biodiversity and Travel & Transport in their grounds and operations.
Over 90 Gaelic Games clubs were awarded official Green Club status by the GAA in a ceremony in Croke Park last November and more than 300 clubs are enrolled in the latest phase of the Green Club programmes.
Clubs that are not formal participants in the Green Club Programme can still take action in their club with the help of the Green Club Toolkit: https://learning.gaa.ie/GreenClub
More information on the ACCESS programme is available at: https://access-cc.eu/