Research Impact: The success of sport events rely heavily on volunteers. In particular games with athletes with special needs, like those with organ transplants, the volunteers require training to be competent to support the athletes. Failure to be sufficiently trained can be life threatening, and in previous transplant games fatalities are not uncommon. Therefore, the volunteers of the European Transplant Sports week took part in a survey to investigate their learning from training through the lens of social learning theories. The participants in this study included volunteers that are typically older than in other multi-sport events like the Olympic and Paralympic Festivals. There were perceived improvements in working with people with organ transplants following the training, and in accordance with social learning theories, it was the work experience and interaction with other volunteers whereby the most increase in competence was observed. The details of the volunteer training programme are described in this article and can be a good case study for volunteer training in the transplant games. The 2020 European Tranplant and Dialysis Sports championships will be held in Dublin between the 9-16th August 2020.
Ng, K. and Salmikangas, A.K., 2019. Social Learning among Transplant Event Volunteers. European Journal of Adapted Physical Activity – Ahead of Print. EUJAPA X:X |DOI: 10.5507/euj.2019.008
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