Roma / Itália
Key-stakeholders involved:
This Action was aimed at the inclusion of refugees regarding the different categories, especially the more vulnerable ones.
Refugees are just like Italian citizens and are made up of different, gender, age, abilities, cultural backgrounds. Specific objectives should be proposed for different categories as not all categories can participate in the same activities.
Two sport associations were active in this project, Lazio Calcio A8 and Fairplay School. “Lazio Calcio A8” dedicated football practice to older refugees in the form of walking football so they were also able to take part in physical activity. “Fairplay school” dedicated training sessions to refugees that have mental and physical disabilities. This was very innovative as it focused on inclusion in integration.
Just as citizens that are more vulnerable according to their categories, the same applies to refugees. Refugees however, differ as they start off already feeling excluded for a number of reasons, such as their cultural background and language barrier, their vulnerabilities add on to these and can cause isolation and depression. Through this project we were able to give the same sporting opportunities to vulnerable categories of refugees. Another positive impact was they too were able to mix with Italian citizens in the same categories and surprisingly enough they found more in common with each other.
More attention is needed not only to refugees as one single category but the different categories within. The Recommendation is to focus on all categories of Refugees.
Gabriella Bascelli
gabriellabascelli@gmail.com