Usprk

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Inspiration

After working with student-athletes for more than 15 years and completing a PhD in this area, I have come to realise that student-athletes from all over the world are faced with a variety of struggles ranging from personal to structural; from a lack of social support to mental health and well-being challenges. Quite often the support offered does not match the demands of the target market (Generations Z & Alpha). As it was recently highlighted by the Sport Ireland High-Performance Strategy, student-athlete support should be holistic, innovative, and create a positive environment for the individual.

What it does

This platform offers an integrated and seamless system that manages the complete continuum of support services aimed at student-athletes (from 15 years of age) by developing an innovative and adaptive educational platform. The aim of this platform is to empower student-athletes from all over the world to make better decisions, create meaningful connections, share experiences and progress conversations.

This platform incorporates 3 major parts:

1. A community space designed for student-athletes to lead the conversation, showcase talent and create connections. Virtual meetup/co-working space will be organised so student-athletes can discuss topics (lead and curated by experts), answer questions, build habits and spend some time to focus on work/study.

2. An educational platform which will provide: 2a. A series of innovative topics adapted to Gen Z and Alpha (finance, marketing & digital literacy, nutrition, business & career, performance ...) 2b: A variety of performance tools designed to give student-athletes and their management team a 360 degrees view of his/her performance

3. A network exchange that will connect student-athletes with quality, trustworthy & skilled Sports Performance support personnel (selected with rigorous criteria)

How we built it

Still building it

Challenges we ran into

The technological aspects, especially on the coding side.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to make a meaningful impact on student-athletes life and their education system by giving them tools and creating worldwide connections. Empowering them to lead by creating sustainable and positive changes to their support system. Being able to connect an 18 years old GAA player, a cricket player from India, a sailor from San Francisco, a soccer player from Japan and allowing them to exchange ideas around various topics is truly empowering.

What we learned

Think outside the box, never be afraid to ask for support: a project of this magnitude requires perseverance and patience!

What's next for Usprk

I am still at the preparation stage and in the final stages of refining the process via feedback, suggestions and focus groups. The next step will be to start developing/designing a prototype, prioritize features and score their progress via a specific set of performance indicators. Of course, the aim is to find partners and backers that truly believe in the potential of this platform

Built With

• creativity
• design
• research