Ragazze Nel Pallone (Padua, Italy) | Assist Associazione Nazionale Atlete (ASSIST)

Ragazze nel Pallone is Italy’s biggest women’s sports festival. The new edition will be held in Padua in July 2023. It aims to enhance the skills and abilities of women, increase the visibility of women’s sport and to provide space for new talents.

Ragazze nel pallone is a non-profit sports association founded in 2009 with the goal of promoting access to all sports from childhood onwards without gender discrimination.

The association organises Italy’s largest women’s sports festival, which is now in its thirteenth year.

Our events also prioritise social commitment by raising awareness of important social issues. We support initiatives of particular interest through financial contributions.

Each edition of Ragazze Nel Pallone has been a challenge, with months of uncertainty (many of the women worry about limitations and that they are not good enough), but this is always followed by the satisfaction of success. This victory is personal, not only for other women but for women’s sport as a whole.

Focus: Accessibility, Inclusion and Sustainability

Venue: Impianto Polifunzionale Filippo Raciti, Str. Pelosa, 74C, 35136 Padova PD, Italien

Date: 7^th -9^th July 2024

We held team meetings with volunteers to analyse how accessible, inclusive, and sustainable our event is. We discussed and defined the concepts of accessibility, inclusion, and sustainability using the project’s resources like the analysis report and good practices. Following these discussions, we decided to focus on improving the three key areas:

• Accessibility: We made contact with parasport clubs (CUS) and connected with para-athletes to assess their needs to effectively participate in the event. Due to limited resources in 2023, we won’t have the possibility to host a disabled sport tournament, which will be an objective for the 2024 edition, in cooperation with CUS Padova wheelchair basketball team and Vicenza disability football team.
• Inclusion: The festival is already inclusive in terms of gender neutrality and LGBTQI minorities. However, we need to reach out to vulnerable groups with less access to sport, such as migrants and refugees. Advertisements and signs should be in multiple languages during the festival to engage girls from other countries. We also aim to partner with two clubs in Padua that specifically work with women refugees and football. Nevertheless, the team feels that being inclusive to women and girls with refugee status or migrant backgrounds requires specific competencies and networks that the current volunteer team doesn’t possess. Strengthening collaboration with these two clubs may help us improve in this respect, as well as promoting specific collaboration with local associations/NGOs for the 2024 edition.
• Sustainability: Sustainability is a topic close to the hearts of our volunteers, and we all feel the need to do more in this area. The group reviewed the good practices outlined by the project and discussed the sustainability issues identified in the report, focusing on practical solutions that the event could implement. Transportation with a low environmental impact was a big concern, especially since the festival takes place in an urban area with limited public transportation. One proposal that the volunteers agreed on is to request more cooperation from the Municipality, including additional bus services during the event, and promotion of car-pooling options. We also want to push for the development of better cycle paths in the area. When it comes to using biodegradable materials for food and beverages, there is the challenge of the higher cost compared to disposable options. One option proposed is partnering with another festival in the city – a music festival with a sports area – that follows a fully biodegradable approach. Joining forces with them could potentially lead to discounts from producers/companies. Partnering with other sporting events to lower the prices of sustainable materials also emerged as an interesting approach for the 2024 edition.

+++ The event is upcoming! +++

The event will take place July 2023, measures previously mentioned were planned for the upcoming event and 2024 edition

1) We realised that we had taken inclusivity, accessibility, and sustainability for granted, without fully understanding the depth of knowledge required. This was an important lesson that highlighted the need for more discussions with our volunteer team.

2) We had a lively debate about sponsors for the first time, their integrity, and their commitment to inclusivity and sustainability. We will keep these aspects in mind right from the start when looking for sponsors for future events.

3) We recognised the importance of improving our networking and partnership capabilities with other events. Our mapping of events across Europe taught us this valuable lesson.

4) Funding is an area that still requires improvement. Although we set up a crowdfunding campaign for the 2023 edition, we recognise that more action is necessary to diversify our funding channels. (www.gofundme). But we’re struggling to reach our target. This shows that we need more training and capacity building in this area, along with increased funding capacity. We also need to attract more donors outside our current network that supports the festival. While the project was helpful in introducing the topic, giving examples, and setting up a crowdfunding tool, it didn’t quite give us the boost we needed to secure the necessary funding for improvement and expansion.