Greece / Lesvos / Mytilene
Key-stakeholders involved:
- Movement On The Ground
- FC Barcelona Foundation
Brief description
Implementation of the practice
Impact
Lessons learnt/recommendation
Contact details
ActionAid Hellas implements the “Inclusion through football3” programme at its Community Centre in Kolonos district in Athens, aiming to disrupt existing exclusion and social and political polarization among adolescents, through football and non-football activities at local, national and European level by a) creating mixed football teams (girls, boys, migrants, non-migrant, Roma adolescents) following an interethnic and intercultural community building approach, b) working with adolescents, cultivating positive values and beliefs, such as cooperation, respect, equality, compromise, tolerance, and c) promoting adolescents’ life skills development (e.g., critical thinking, empathy, problem solving, efficient communication), thus enhancing their empowerment. “Inclusion through football3” programme is being implemented in the framework of projects supported by institutions such as European and National Funding Agencies, Foundations, Corporations, and Major Donors.
Since 2019, in its Inclusion through football3 programme, ActionAid Hellas has applied and adapted the football3 methodology, inspired by street football and ideally played in ethnically, culturally and gender mixed teams. ActionAid Hellas has specifically adapted the football3 methodology firstly to talk to adolescents about values, such as cooperation, respect and equality and then to the challenge of intolerance and xenophobia, promoting the values of dialogue, compromise and tolerance contrary to a socially and politically polarized European environment, by creating gender mixed and interethnic football teams, consisted of underprivileged adolescents coming from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In particular, adolescents with migrant background are coming from mainly Albania and Romania and adolescents with refugee background were unaccompanied minors coming from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Iran, and Syria. Most of the participants were boys and living in hosting facilities or other units for asylum seekers/refugees.
Furthermore, apart from the weekly football trainings, adolescents were participating in volunteering activities, organizing youth-led actions, such as cleaning of the neighborhood and campaigns development and contributing to the implementation of community building events, promoting civic engagement and youth leadership. ActionAid Community Centre is also actively engaging adults to its interventions, through capacity building activities, dissemination events and transferability workshops.
In numbers:
- 270 adolescents participated in football sessions, friendly matches, national and international tournaments
- 1206 people (women, men, kids) from the local community who participated in projects’ events
- 1127 adults who participated in capacity-building activities, dissemination events, public policy workshops and conferences
Through the implementation of football3 sessions, adolescents made new friends, which, in the context of an inter-ethnic / intercultural team, means that they have developed understanding and relationships with people of different backgrounds. Communication, mutual respect, and healthy expression of opinions and feelings seem also to have been achieved for team members through their participation to a great extent. Finally, adolescents have started to build resilience through their participation in the team but also in the off-field activities and initiatives that helped to increase their civic engagement, mainly in terms of being empowered to overcome difficulties that might occur, while also developing the willingness to offer in their community. It seems that they showed interest and volunteered to support actions and events organized in the Center and in the local community. Mobilizing youngsters to participate in off-field activities and to organize initiatives, helped to develop a sense of belonging and to increase their leadership skills. Gradually, strong ties have been created among the team members.
After 3 years of working towards inclusion through sports the following we can summarize the lessons learnt below:
- Time and consistent work is needed for results to be shown in the application of the methodology but also in the activities that adolescents participated in. Youth-led initiatives and football3 methodology cannot be expected to emerge in short time frames and a lot of work needs to be done in terms of encouraging the building of strong bonds within the team before youngsters start participating and organizing community actions themselves.
- The methodology seems difficult to be applied to large groups of adolescents, especially when there is turnover and non-constant participation. Furthermore, the age of the team members also seems to be a factor that influences the application and assimilation of the methodology. It seems that younger adolescents adapt more easily to a different way of playing and incorporate new values and rules more easily, while older teens are more difficult to engage on a regular basis.
- Friendly matches, tournaments, meeting with athletes, purchase of team uniforms, trophies, are elements that adolescents enjoy and that can foster participation and the team’s motivation.
- Team members seem to have been strengthened through their involvement in off-pitch activities and managed to enhance their leadership skills and sense of responsibility. Moreover, the initiatives organized by a number of team members positively influenced and mobilized the rest of them and the involvement in the actions further strengthened the feeling of belonging and fellowship.
- Working with multicultural teams, language might cause barriers since it is important to achieve a clear understanding of such methodologies that are based on discussion and dialogue. In order to facilitate the discussions and to minimize the risk of misunderstandings, interpretation can be used and -as happened in our case- other team members can take spontaneously the role of the interpreter for others.
ActionAid Hellas
Ioanna Papadopoulou – Local Communities & Inclusion Programme Coordinator – Ioanna.papadopoulou@actionaid.org
Despoina Gligori – Local Communities & Inclusion Programme Officer- Despoina.gligori@actionaid.org
Eleni Loumaki – Trainer / mediator
eleni.loumaki@actionaid.org
Phone: +30 6955069348