About the project

Swim to Live 5 represents a cooperative initiative established under the Erasmus+ Sport program from January 2024 to December 25. This project has been designed with the primary objective of addressing the issue of mental health among adolescents afflicted with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The project endeavours to assist adolescents with ADHD by harnessing the therapeutic potential of swimming, mindfulness techniques, and effective time management strategies, recognizing them as pivotal tools for enhancing their overall well-being.

Furthermore, our project aims to elevate the knowledge and competencies of sports instructors, educators, and sports organizations. Our objective is to equip them with the necessary expertise to comprehend and effectively support individuals with ADHD through the utilization of physical exercise and complementary activities such as mindfulness and proficient time management techniques.

We will seek the following goals: to promote social inclusion through sport, to gain knowledge for instructors and club leaders, to learn how to encourage good practices throughout the EU, to influence the local environment, and to influence the national programmes for promoting an active lifestyle for adolescents with ADHD.

In the end, we will have a collection of knowledge, which we will gather in a  guidebook where we will propose and describe techniques and tools which can help people with ADHD to control their symptoms, to increase their functioning, self-worth and well-being. This guidebook could be used by people with ADHD and also by caregivers, instructors and teachers.

Ways that Swimming Can Help ADHD: Swimming can increase attention span. During swimming there are few opportunities for distraction, no physical contact with others, and low complexity of rules and strategies. It is also a sport with individualized participation, it provides the energy release and endorphins of rigorous activity without the challenges of the disorder, including heightened distraction and decreased spatial awareness. Sports also offer social interaction and encouragement from peers. Although swimming is largely an individual activity, it also contains the social benefits of team sports if a person joins a swimming team.

Mindfulness: Researches show that mindfulness can improve symptoms of ADHD, such as distractibility, attention, and sense of well-being. Many people with ADHD are initially intimidated by mindfulness or meditation because they have an image of meditating for hours. This is not the case, for ADHD practices are as brief as five to ten minutes. Mindfulness activities may include formal meditation practices such as tai-chi, yoga, breathing exercises, or visualizations. They may also be informal, such as intentional focus during walking, eating, or brushing your teeth.

Teaching structuring through following a schedule: People with ADHD often struggle with a cluster of cognitive skills, as well as executive functions that include time management, initiating tasks, organization, prioritizing, and follow-through. One way to minimize this burden is to create more structure and order. Having a schedule helps people feel calmer. It is important to remember: “Done is better than perfect”. This is relevant, especially for those more perfectionistic people with ADHD. 

We will design and publish a combined programme based on swimming workouts and mindfulness. Our participants will be practising in the water and doing mindfulness practices (mindful meditation, mindful stretching, Yin-yoga, meditation or similar). 

Products 

  • The pilot project: our organizations will offer their participants free-of-charge lessons that will include training twice a week at the swimming pool for up to 6 months, combined with mindfulness and meditation lessons and through that, a small trustful community for support and structuring. They will receive a programme to follow and they will keep a log of their progress and their experiences, which will help us and our experts to make adjustments and improvements within the programme through the lifetime of the project. They will be taught how to use mindfulness to increase their attention to relevant things and not be distracted by internal or external stimuli. Through swimming as an aerobic activity they will learn how to distribute their energy better and because swimming is a very technical sport it helps to increase the attention span and as it is practiced in the medium of water, it also helps to relax and lower increased activation.  
  • We will improve accessibility to the platform and the outcomes for people with fewer opportunities such as the blind or the visually impaired.
  • Swim to Live guidebook (digital version) and webinars
  • Swim to Live License
  • The international collection of knowledge on our interactive web portal www.swimtolive.org and various social media
  • Promotional videos

Phases of the project

15.1.2024 - Online meeting 1 (Riba is the organiser) - a quick celebration with partners, instructions on choosing the swimmers, delegating tasks, informing the experts and giving the instructions on how to use the web portal and social media, and discussing our common goals of the project.

21.1. - 1.3.2024 - Talking and coordinating with the experts and coordinating with the team about the first transnational project meeting and literature review. 

15.-17.3.2024 - Transnational project meeting 1 in Slovenia -  Kick-off meeting; teambuilding, development of the project, workshop about ADHD (medical doctor), psychology of motivation, mindfulness workshop, experts meeting. 

18.3.- 31.6.2024 - Project development and cooperation between the experts, and instructors: mindfulness activities, watching the webinars, discussing questions that have emerged, developing training plans, and reviewing the literature. Tasks for club leaders: facilities reservations, choosing the group, planning the meetings and workshops, and preparing themes for the lectures.

1.9. - 1.10.2024 - Choosing and testing the group of swimmers: students with a formal diagnosis, measuring their fitness. How will we find the swimmers? We will contact organisations that deal with disabled people and organisations that deal with students who have special needs. We will also contact universities directly. 

1.10. 2024 - 29.3. 2025

  • Swimming lessons and mindfulness for the participants: 24 weeks of swimming and mindfulness activities and sharing experiences. 
  • Local workshops for participants: building community and learning new skills with swimming instructors and experts; talking about the psychology of ADHD, motivating each other, learning about time structuring, and keeping the commitment.
  • Open house days
  • Recording the stories of the swimmers. 
  • Making, editing and posting videos and photos on social media. 
  • Licensing tasks for instructors and gaining competencies.

10.11.2024 - Online meeting 2 (Euphoria Net is the organiser) - discussing the benefits of swimming for people with ADHD. Workshop about teaching swimming to non-neurotypical adolescents. Review of the literature. Review of collected materials, explaining how to categorise video material. Discussing the dissemination strategies and planning how to promote the project internationally.  

7.4.-9.4.2025 - Transnational project meeting 2 in Greece, Katerini - up to 6 participants from each partner (5 plus 1 companion or 3 visually impaired plus 3 companions) meet in Greece, to have team building and social activities (cultural exchange). The core of the meeting will be sharing experiences within different cultures and receiving peer support. This is an opportunity to have fun and see that there are nice and friendly people with similar interests all around the world. Choosing the literature for the chapters for the guidebook and distributing the writing tasks.

15.4.-19.4.2025 - External evaluators go over the tasks of instructors and decide who will receive the licence. Gathering results and evaluations from swimmers.

13.4. - 31.12.2025 - Dissemination of the project: Our main tools are our website and social media channels (FB, IG and YouTube channel), where we will regularly share posts and videos about the project and our project products. We will also attend national and international conferences and give presentations on the project. 

15.7. - 17.7.2025 - Transnational project meeting 3 in Slovenia - Developing the tools for visually impaired adolescents. Writing the internal report, dissemination breakdown, finalising the guidebook and Swim to Live licence handing out, and evaluation.

10.9. 2025 Online meeting 3 (Kory Francisc is the organiser) - Expert lecture about the benefits of swimming for people with ADHD, review of collected materials, internal monitoring on the national and international promotion of the project and meetings with stakeholders.

12.10. - 31.12.2025 - Writing the final evaluation, results gathering and sorting out, dissemination locally and internationally, writing articles, posting videos on YouTube, finalisation and publishing of the Guidebook and translations to local languages.

Partners

ŠD Riba (Slovenia)

The Riba swimming club, officially a sports association, was founded in 2002 by a group of young swimming enthusiasts and ex-competitive swimmers, brimming with ideas and eager to put them into practice. Our ideas are working and our enthusiasm is going as strong as ever. Through the years we turned hundreds of people into regular swimmers. 

We know how to teach swimming everybody - children, adults, seniors, disabled, disadvantaged etc. Over the years we learned a lot from trials and mistakes and have participated in many training courses. In our staff we have licenced instructors, swimming teacher and coaches (licenced by Slovenian Swimming Association) and professionals who gained their degree from Faculty of Sports (University of Ljubljana). We have a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge. 

Riba has members aged from 3 to over 75, who all love swimming and share the appreciation of this sport that not only exercises the body but is good for the mind as well. And since injuries in swimming are rare, it’s a sport that can be done throughout one’s entire life. We share our beliefs and knowledge with all who join us. We learn from one another and grow together, because swimming is our passion. Our mission is to provide fun and challenging swimming workouts to all who want them.

Our ongoing programs: beginners and advanced swimming courses for children, adolescent and adults, competitive program (there are 5 training groups or squads in the competitive program), recreational swimming for adults and competitive (masters) squad. Besides that we organize courses and events for disabled children and adults - from beginner and advanced classes to competitive swimming programs for people and children with disabilities. We tend to integrate all abilities and all age groups if the pool and timing and desire of people involved enables such a programme. 

We are one of the 4 main swimming clubs in our nation’s capital and consist of around 700 members, which include all levels of swimming, all age groups and the physically and mentally disabled. 

Euphoria Net (Italy)

Euphoria Net Srl is an Italian company specialized in 3 main fields:

  1. Project management: they follow all the aspects related to EU projects, from planning and writing projects, implementing them, following the dissemination activities and the reporting, including also working on different outputs according to the projects’ needs. In particular, they have a specific focus on the educational world, and their collaborators are specialized in project management, financial management, communication, pedagogy and new methodologies for education, innovation and instructional design.
  2. Training courses: they organize training courses especially for schools of any grade, Universities and associations on the following topics: project management, digital competencies, entrepreneurship, boosting STEM at school, EU citizenship, personalized learning and innovative teaching/learning methodologies. They are a hosting organization within Erasmus KA1 courses for school education staff and this helped us to build a network of schools from all over Europe. They also create tailor-made formats for training courses, both on site or through e-learning solutions.
  3. Organization of events and communication strategies: They organize dissemination strategies within projects, including setting-up of project branding, communication, stakeholders’ mapping, organising and coordinating events all over Europe, and creating content for events and social media campaigns. They also develop graphic works to provide a full visual identity service within events and digital marketing. 

Asociatia Clubul Sportiv Kory Francis (Romania)

ACS Kory Francisc is a sport club with the main activity in the field of sport for disabled persons especially visually impaired or blind persons. We promote active participation in sports of disabled persons, social inclusion by sport and improving self-esteem. We participate in many competitions and we organize many sport activities/ competitions and conferences in the field of habilitation and rehabilitation of disabled people.

Our association activates around 200 visually impaired/ blind children. Our sports are: swimming, torball, goalball, field tennis, bouldering, climbing, chess, tandem biking, etc. 

The goal of "ACS Kory Francisc" is:

a) sports training, especially of young people with or without disabilities, who wish to practice sports and not only,  participation in competitions organized by law enforcement bodies;

b) organization of actions for sports training of young people with or without disabilities

c) editing programs, posters and other sports propaganda publications; other means of action in connection with the purpose of the association

d) Collaboration with other associations, foundations or other organizations acting in the field of performance sports for people with or without disabilities, in order to organize assistance and consultancy actions in order to support the interests of the members of the Association;

Objectives of the Association

The objectives of the association are established in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Physical Education and Sport no. 69/2000 and H.G. no. 884/2001 for the approval of the Regulation implementing the provisions of the Law on Physical Education and Sport no. 69/2000, respectively to contribute to the improvement and maintenance of the health of its members through:

  • practicing exercise and sport by people with or without disabilities
  • carrying out educational and recreational activities
  • integration of children with physical impairments in all their activities
  • improving, in all its forms, the material basis necessary for the physical-sporting activities at the optimal level and in maximum safety conditions
  • ensuring the need for human resources, their professional training in the spirit of group activities
  • supporting and conducting theoretical and practical activities aimed at - recovery, physical therapy and movement of persons with disabilities and not only
  • elaboration and development of own programs, as well as participation in projects in accordance with the purpose of the association
  • organizing and participating in conferences, symposiums and other scientific and informative cultural sports events
  • organizing and carrying out any other activity compatible with the purpose of the association.

We collaborate with Babes Bolyai University, specifically with the Sport Faculty, the Physical Therapy department. We work with many volunteer students. We also train our volunteers and collaborators how to approach and work with disabled persons. 

We are involved in many projects: local, national end European in the field of active lifestyle and social integration of visually impaired persons.

Kolymvitikos Athlitikos Omilos Asterias (Greece) 

Asterias (starfish) is a swimming club in Katerini, Greece, which offers swimming lessons for children from the age of one, disabled children (mostly ambulatory) and adults.

The club operates in a modern swimming facility with an indoor swimming pool (15m length, 10m width, 1.20 -1.40 depth) with facilities for disabled people. Asterias organizes sports camps for children 5—12 years old. Asterias also provides private swimming lessons for disabled people and organizes educational trips and camps for its members. Asterias masters age group and competitive swimmers aim is to participate in swimming competitions.  Asterias has more than 500 active swimmers. All the teachers of the club are scientists of Physical Education with specialization in swimming. 

Asterias staff is specialized in teaching swimming to all people. People with disabilities, elderly people and people in the rehabilitation process. Asterias is part of Nautilius, an Erasmus+ project dedicated to disabled people and related mainly with swimming as a means for social inclusion and well-being. 

They have been a part of two Erasmus+ sport projects so far in 2018 (the Nautilus, Ludus and Swim your way project).



Past projects - from 2017 to 2022