ROME (ITALPRESS) – “We are certainly facing four challenging, important years, which we hope will leave behind many of the emergencies we experienced in our first term. An important commitment in favor of the membership base, in favor of more than 12 thousand associations, amateur sports clubs and affiliated third sector entities, because Uisp is one of the largest intermediate bodies in the country. And so the challenges are linked to a precise duty of representation to sustain and support that enormous social heritage that citizenship sport has in this country.” Tiziano Pesce, president of the Italian Union of Sport For All, summarizes in this way the most important challenges he thinks he will have to face in the next four years, constantly keeping in the foreground the protection of the needs of the grassroots movement, which is increasingly struggling at the moment.
“I’m thinking of the post-Covid, but also of the great emergencies that have been added afterwards, such as inflation and the high cost of energy, which has obviously had a very heavy impact on grassroots sports associations,” Pesce continued in an interview in the Rome office of Italpress. “We are thinking of the entities that manage facilities: we have the need for policymakers to listen to us more and more, because there is certainly a theme of resources that accompany reforms, such as legislative reforms of the sports system, the third sector, or even the epoch-making one of sports work. And then there is a great request that we reiterate to the central government and parliamentary forces: there is a need for great simplification and regulatory harmonization.”
As soon as he took office, Pesce stressed that he wanted to represent the Uisp of the territories that raises its gaze in a European dimension: “Uisp is a large associative network that turns its gaze to Europe and finds its strength in the territories, with 116 territorial committees and 19 regional committees, and in more than one million practitioners and hundreds of thousands of card-carrying members. Uisp has long launched its pro-European vocation also thanks to its collaboration with the European Economic and Social Committee and with many European projects.”
And precisely on the European front, continued the Uisp number one, “there is certainly a need for greater attention so that all areas of sport, obviously starting with the basic ones, find the right economic support, but also the right application of attention that sport must have as a real public policy. Remembering, however, that since 2023 the recognition of the educational, social, and promotion of psychophysical well-being value of sporting activity in all its forms is enshrined in our Constitutional Charter.” Sport, Pesce further admits, “should be everyone’s right, but it certainly is not yet. There is a need for even more careful national legislation and interaction with regional legislations, with that gaze turned, precisely, to Europe. Sport is health promotion, inclusion, welfare and well-being of our communities. Starting even from local governments, we need to invest in sport, which can be public policy in the environment, education, transportation and urban planning. It definitely takes,” Pesce concludes, “a new collective attention.
– Photo and video Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).