FC Porto to welcome the ACCESS project partners for a meeting and to take them on a study tour of their major local private and public partnerships

As the project recently entered its second year, the meeting in Porto, kindly hosted by FC Porto on 19 and 20 September will serve as a good opportunity to look back at the recent outputs and look ahead at the busy autumn and winter months in the four participating sport organisations.

Dragao stadium, overlooking the city of Porto, will see the six project partners come together again since they last met in Pisa, seven months ago. The meeting comes not much after some of the key deliverables were produced which round up the first year of the project and the extensive assessments and identifications of potentials for improved environmental management. Worry not, they will soon be made available to the wider public, ready to inspire and motivate other sport organisations to look at their own environmental performances and potential improvements.

The meeting itself comes amidst the creation and the progress of four Circular City Committees (CCC) in Ireland, Porto, Wales and Denmark coordinated by the four participating sport organisations. These CCCs represent efforts to create inclusive and participatory platforms that would see public and private stakeholders partake in sport organisations’ ambitions to improve their environmental performances. The ultimate objective is to put together all the skills, tools, capacities and resources various stakeholders have in local communities in the service for enhancing the application of circular economy and environmental management solutions.

Apart from the updates and latest news, the meeting will also result in a launch of a webinar series, open to all interested parties, to happen from October to December this year.

The highlight of the first day will be a training module, developed by Susan Buckingham, an expert who combines environmental issues and gender mainstreaming. This training will want to provoke the project partners and make them think from the gender perspective when defining strategies, objectives and implementing solutions.

FC Porto has already advanced in the field of local cooperation and will use the second day of the meeting to showcase its partnerships. The project partners will embark on a study trip visiting which would include visits of some of the club’s partners in the field of environmental management, namely LIPOR, serving as the waste management company for the greater Porto region, Universidade Portucalense, an established research institute in the field of interaction between football, its fans and environmental aspects, finishing with the Porto City Council, and its Water and Energy campus.