ParaManager goes global

The European Paralympic Committee’s flagship development project, ParaManager, has been presented to a global audience at the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) Global Coach Conference in Athens, Greece. 

ParaManager, supported as part of Erasmus+, aims to transform the management of Para sport in Europe and follows on from a similar initiative delivered for coaching – the European Coach Developer Academy. 

The project aims to foster inclusion and awareness of disability at a managerial level in both grass-roots and high performance sports with the ultimate aim of more people with disabilities having access to sport for fun and for competition. 

Dr. Vassilis Kalyvas and Dr. Sakis Kostaris from the National Paralympic Committee of Greece and Dr. Piotr Marek and Dr. Michal Starszewski of the National Paralympic Committee of Poland presented ParaManager to the ICCE Global Coach Conference in November. 

The conference bought together over 400 delegates and 200 speakers from around the world including coaches, coach developers, researcher, sport scientists, technical directors and sport administrators. 

The event was held at the same time as the second in-person transnational gathering of the ParaManager project group, also in Athens. 

Hosted by the National Paralympic Committee of Greece, one of the project’s seven partners, participants were welcomed by President Georgios Kappellakis, who attended an afternoon session and hosted dinner. 

On the agenda was a progress review on the development of a ParaManager Framework which will help general managers and decision makers to understand and identify real needs experienced by people with disabilities and staff, and how they can develop more inclusive policies and practices in their clubs and organisations as a result. 

Work on the framework to date has included the gathering of data from all project partners. As a result, a qualification system is being considered with further research being carried out to ensure the e-learning course, also being developed as part of ParaManager, and certification is sustainable in the long-term. 

All of the resources produced by ParaManager will be available to all European Paralympic Committee Members when finalised by the end of 2026. 

Finally, activities related to the wide promotion of ParaManager was discussed in Athens. In addition to the ICCE Global Coach Conference, ParaManager has featured on the Discovery Programme at this summer’s European Para Youth Games and at the 2025 European Paralympic Committee Conference, as well as on a podcast from the Council of Europe’s Sport for All Initiative. 

The project group is now seeking new opportunities within scientific papers to highlight the development of the framework and associated research. 

Also in Athens, the timing of the final conference for ParaManager was agreed to be September/October 2026. 

ParaManager is led by the European Paralympic Committee and is formed of a consortium of National Paralympic Committee partners in Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Serbia and Slovakia. 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EACEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.