An initiative launched a few years ago by the French Parachuting Federation receives again support from the European Commission. This time massively! HandiFly provides the motor-disabled with opportunities to discover and even compete in parachuting/skydiving, true to its motto “When you can’t walk, you can still fly!”
The #WindTunnelHandifly2021 project led by the Fédération Française de Parachutisme (FFP) has been selected by the European Commission as part of the 2020 Erasmus + Sports' call for projects. It will receive funding in the amount of € 498,550.
The commission found the project that the FFP's Deputy Director Jérôme David had presented “extremely well elaborated and documented," selecting it from among a total of 1145 projects and rewarding it as one of 14 (from 79) proposed in the category "European non-profit sporting events."
Jerôme presented #WindTunnelHandifly2021 to the summiteers during a breakout session at the Indoor Skydiving First Global Summit in February. Many of the contacts with members of the indoor skydiving industry, who are involved in this pan-European project by providing their facilities, were in fact established during the summit.
While the FFP was successful with its HandiFly project in the past and received the acknowledgment and a grant of the European Commission last year already, the scope and the support for #WindTunnelHandifly2021 dwarf everything. Nearly 500,000 € will, as Jérôme puts it, "allow the project to take off and unfold in its most ambitious format, with the aim of being the symbol for the impact of European policies in favor of social inclusion."
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