MOVE Quality

We believe that great quality initiatives which inspire more people to be physically active should be rewarded. We also know there are potentially great initiatives out there for hard-to-reach populations that just need a helping hand to make a bigger impact. MOVE Quality aims to identify these initiatives, build the capacity of the organisations delivering them and reward their achievements with a Quality Mark. That's because validation should be more than putting an organisation on the back - it should be the result of a quality building process.

MOVE Quality is a 12-month process consisting of a series of development and evaluation phases culminating in the Quality Mark. These phases include researching, evaluating and promoting good practice; creating clear strategies; empowering new generations of leaders and building constructive partnerships.

MOVE Quality is for any sport organisation and local authority in Europe that is carrying out physical activity initiatives for hard-to-reach populations and wishes to develop the quality of their initiatives. The sport organisation and/or local authority must be willing to allow their progress and achievements to be externally evaluated, and commit to taking part in the activities that shape the MOVE Quality development process.

What are hard-to-reach populations?

With 59% of the European population stating that they are rarely or never physically active (Eurobarometer, 2014), it could be argued that a large proportion of the European population is hard-to-reach when it comes to their uptake of physical activity initiatives.

But there are some groups in society that are more difficult to engage in physical activity than others due to various factors, including their access to facilities, motivation, physical capabilities, lack of knowledge about where they can participate in recreation, cost and other circumstances (Dunn, Drust, Murphy & Richardson, 2012, p. 282).

These groups include:

• Youth with difficult backgrounds or behavioural problems
• Women and girls
• Ethnic minorities
• Elderly people
• Disabled people
• Homeless people