What happens when a sports challenge turns into a mysterious forest, and the only way to move forward is to trust the person walking beside you?
On July 28 in Mariano del Friuli and on July 29 in Gorizia, more than 150 participants—including children ages 7 to 11, teenage volunteers, and adult educators who supported the activities, took part in two Sports4Fun Days. These events were organized as part of the European Sports4Fun project and carried out in close collaboration with the organization C WONDER, whose summer camps support the project’s Italian pilot initiative.
Co-funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ Sport program, Sports4Fun promotes physical activity, healthy lifestyles, inclusion, participation, and social cohesion through innovative, accessible, and fun sports experiences.
For these events, the “Sports4Fun Healthy Lifestyle” program was adapted for the summer camp’s Halloween-themed days, demonstrating how the games and educational activities included in the broader Sports4Fun catalog can be easily integrated into programs organized by schools, organizations, summer camps, and local communities throughout the year, while upholding the project’s educational goals and values.
🔗 Explore the Sports4Fun catalog and the project’s resources: https://sports4funproject.com
Learning Through Play
Throughout the day, the children took part in a program of games and challenges designed jointly by Sports4Fun and C-WONDER, which combined the camp’s Halloween theme with the project’s educational goals.
One of the highlights of the Sports4Fun activities was the Trust Trail – Dark Forest Trail, in which a child, blindfolded, navigated a short obstacle course by following instructions from a partner. In addition to strengthening communication, empathy, and mutual trust, the activity also encouraged the children to experience a different perspective, discovering what it means to rely on someone else’s guidance and recognizing that everyone may need support at different times. In this way, the game became a simple yet powerful way to reflect on inclusion, accessibility, and the importance of ensuring that sports can be enjoyed by people with different abilities and needs.
The program continued with the Pumpkin Toss Challenge, a game of precision that fostered concentration, teamwork, and fair play, before the participants switched roles, experiencing both what it means to lead someone and what it means to rely on another person. Together, these activities demonstrated that successful teamwork is based on communication, patience, inclusion, and mutual support.
These Sports4Fun activities blended seamlessly with the broader Halloween-themed activities developed in collaboration with the C-WONDER team, including broom races, sack races, relay races, and other playful challenges, creating a day filled with movement, creativity, and shared experiences. The event demonstrated how the Sports4Fun methodology can be easily adapted to different educational contexts and themes, enriching existing programs with inclusive games that promote participation, cooperation, and well-being.
Listening to Children’s Experiences
At the end of the activities, participants were invited to reflect on their experience through a short questionnaire. This brief reflection gave the children an opportunity to express their feelings, while also providing valuable feedback on the experience. The initial responses collected were very encouraging, showing high levels of enjoyment and enthusiasm for the activities and confirming the potential of playful and inclusive sports experiences to promote cooperation, trust, and positive relationships among children.
Growing Together Through Sports
Over the course of the two Sports4Fun days, physical activity became a way to put the project’s core values into practice: communication, trust, empathy, collaboration, inclusion, participation, fair play, healthy lifestyles, personal well-being, and a stronger sense of community.
Experience has also shown that Sports4Fun’s activities can be successfully adapted to different educational contexts and themes without losing sight of their original purpose: to help children grow through play, movement, and cooperation. Rather than replacing existing programs, the Sports4Fun approach complements and enriches them with activities that encourage social interaction, respect for others, and active participation, demonstrating that sports are not just about performance but also about creating opportunities for everyone to participate and feel included.
Because sports have the power to bring people together, strengthen communities, and help children grow—one game at a time.
With Sports4Fun, every game can become a learning experience. And every challenge can become an opportunity to build stronger, healthier, and more inclusive communities.
A huge thank you to the entire C WONDER team for welcoming us with such enthusiasm, creativity, and team spirit, and for helping us create two memorable Sports4Fun Days where play, movement, and inclusion came together in the best possible way.
