MIND-SET: International Project Meetings and Digital Platform

The challenge

Five national volleyball federations, from Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania, wanted to work together to improve mental-health support for female players and coaches. That meant five languages, five ways of working, and one shared budget and set of deadlines from the European Union under Erasmus+ Sport. The project needed someone to hold it all together.

How we worked

1. Work plan and management. We set up a plan by work package, a deadline for every deliverable and a regular rhythm of online steering committee meetings, with minutes and clear actions after each one.
2. Research in five countries. We coordinated a survey of players and coaches, tracked responses by country and ran an extra round of collection where turnout was low.
3. International meetings. We organised the 2nd Steering Committee in Bucharest on 21–22 October 2026 with the Romanian Volleyball Federation as host: agenda, participants from five countries, a presentation of research results and agreement on the next 12 months.
4. Content and manual. We lead the coach manual and its translation into five languages, with review by a sports psychologist from each federation.
5. Digital platform. We are building the project website and the e-learning platform coaches will train on.
6. Visibility. We prepare posts, photos and reports from every meeting in two languages, in line with EU visibility rules.
7. Next steps. We are preparing the Belgrade meeting in December 2026, a pilot with 10 coaches from each federation and a train-the-trainer course for 50 coaches in Sofia in March 2027.

What we delivered

• A work plan, deliverables calendar and steering committee minutes
• The Bucharest steering committee, including logistics, agenda and materials
• A survey of players and coaches in five countries
• A coach manual in five languages
• The project website and e-learning platform
• Posts and photo reports in Serbian and English

Key figures

• 5 national federations and 5 languages
• 921 survey responses across five countries
• 2 host cities for 2026 meetings: Bucharest and Belgrade
• 50 coaches in the 2027 train-the-trainer course

Outcome

Five federations are working to one plan with clear deadlines: the manual is finalised in November, the e-learning platform launches in November 2026, and the coach pilot starts by year-end. We bring the same experience of running international networks and meetings to every multi-partner, multi-country project.