CAFE Managing Director Joyce Cook recently gave a presentation at UEFA’s HatTrick event in Nyon. 

Joyce spoke to the attending national associations about the importance of implementing the new Disability Access Officer role.

For more than a decade, UEFA's successful HatTrick assistance programme has had a positive impact on the development of European football – helping to strengthen the roots of the game across the continent. The programme has been built on three pillars: investment funding, knowledge-sharing and sports education.

Joyce was joined on stage by Croatian Football Federation Head of International Affairs and Licensing Ivančica Sudac. The presentation took the form of a question and answer session, with Mrs Sudac highlighting the many benefits of clubs appointing Disability Access Officers.

The Croatian Football Federation is one of the first national associations to promote the new initiative amongst their clubs, and Mrs Sudac also sits on the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Committee which ratified the new criterion on 1 July 2015.

Keeping with the theme of access and inclusion, Colour Blind Awareness founder Kathryn Albany-Ward spoke about the importance of awareness around colour blindness. 

To help raise awareness, Iceland national team head coach Lars Lagerbäck provided an interview about how he manages as a national coach with colour blindness. His video interview can be viewed at the end of this article or here.

CAFE and Colour Blind Awareness have created a joint handbook, which was launched at the workshop. The handbook includes advice on how to implement best practices and can be downloaded here.

Speaking after the workshop, Joyce said, “UEFA’s HatTrick programme is an important initiative and we hope that the national associations in attendance have taken some great ideas back with them and will consider projects related to access and inclusion.”

The new UEFA Hat Trick funding programme offers Football Associations a total of €200K over 4 years (€50K a year) for social responsibility projects from 2016 to 2020. CAFE would be pleased to assist member associations considering an application for an access and inclusion project. 

For more information on UEFA’s HatTrick programme, please click here.

Published 02/03/2016