On the 9th & 10th July 2012, the “Golf Stand Consortium” partners met in Munich. The meeting hosted by The PGA of Germany was the final meeting of the two year long Leonardo da Vinci project funded through ECORYS (UK agency), a part of the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. Golf stand is the working title which in full reads “The European Occupational Standards for Golf”, and is promoted by Skills Active, with the strong support of The Confederation of Professional Golf and the European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE).
As this was the last opportunity for the full consortium to meet the main objectives were to: ensure all the agreed outputs identified before the start of the project were on course to be completed by the end date of September 2012, validate the completed documents and to agree a layout for the final outcomes along with a strategy to ensure sustainability following the project completion date.
The group worked through the documents making a few small adjustments to allow for the finished documents to be easily navigated by employers, training providers and the workforce. The objective is to create an accessible and transparent set of documents which will help inform the whole industry to better utilise a professional and well trained workforce to further the develop the Golf industry.
The meeting concluded with some partners having action points to be completed ahead of the final submission to the European Commission who will focus on:
- conformity and consistency of the achievements compared with the expected work plan,
- quality of the series of outcomes developed,
- trans-nationality of the work and efficient involvement of each partner,
- added value and impact of the work carried out at the national, local and European level,
- sustainability of the process for the sector
Many of the partners have reported that the project has been managed extremely well and have complemented the group on the willingness to work together for the benefit of the sport. There has been great interest in the project with countries across Europe and from further afield such as Canada, Australia, South Africa and USA having expressed interest in the final outcome.