The #BeActive EU Sport Awards are funded through the European Union's Erasmus+ programme.
On the evening of 23 September 2025, we pressed “Submit” on the European Commission’s Funding & Tenders Portal. With it, Clubul Montan Transilvania submitted its first project proposal to a European programme: EXPLORE, Explore Transylvania through Nature Heritage and Mountain Trails, in the Volunteering category of the #BeActive EU Sport Awards.
What the #BeActive awards are
The #BeActive EU Sport Awards were launched in 2025 under the Erasmus+ programme and are managed by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). They reward and give visibility to activities that bring people closer to sport and physical activity, in five categories: physical activity, inclusion, volunteering, across generations and peace.
The Volunteering category highlights the role volunteers play in their communities: the people who give their time so that others can be active. It felt like the right category for us, because every hike the club organises is run by volunteers.
What we wrote in the proposal
EXPLORE is not a new project. It is what we already do every Saturday:
- Free hikes every week, in the Apuseni Mountains and around Cluj. By the time we applied, we had organised more than 100 hikes without a single accident.
- About 200 participants a year, roughly a third of them hiking in an organised group for the first time. Our youngest participant was 8 years old and our oldest 75.
- Everything is done by volunteers: routes are scouted in advance, and hikes are led by a licensed national tourist guide.
- Donations are optional and go back to the participants: with them we bought, for example, 30 pairs of crampons, which we lend free of charge on winter hikes.
- We share cars, to split the costs and pollute less.
- We end the day at a local farmhouse or guesthouse that cooks traditional food, so the money stays in the villages we pass through.
- We discover the history of the places along the way: medieval fortresses, the Dacian fortress of Apoulon on Piatra Craivii, old mine entrances.
- We are part of the European hiking family, as a full member of the European Hiking Federation.
How a hike is organised
The proposal also describes what goes on behind each hike, most of which participants never see:
- The Facebook event, in Romanian and English, with the route, meeting point, mandatory equipment and terms and conditions.
- Registration through a form, until Thursday.
- Friday confirmation: in the morning we send a confirmation email, and in the evening, after placing the confirmed participants in cars in order of registration, we send all the details, the weather forecast and the route as a GPX file.
- The Saturday hike, usually ending with a goulash.
- The Sunday email, with thanks, the photos from the hike and the recorded track.
What comes next
An expert jury evaluates the applications between October 2025 and March 2026, and the finalists will be announced in March 2026. Whatever the result, it was a good exercise: we wrote down what we do, how and why. And it was the club’s first step towards European projects.
Thank you to everyone who has hiked with us. You are the project.
See you in the mountains!