During this meeting the five partner organizations had the chance to get to know each other – unfortunately from behind a screen but still managing to get the best out of this first encounter. L’Orma ssd (Italy) is the project coordinator, whereas the partner organizations are (hereby presented in alphabetical order): Associació Esportiva Ciutat Vella (Spain) which is active in the city of Barcelona; Astiki Mi Kerdoskopiki Etairia 4C: Cooperate-Communicate-Create-Change (Greece), based in Athens; Network For European Citizenship & Identity (Cyprus); and Youth Sport Trust International (United Kingdom) with headquarters in Leicestershire.

The goal of ‘Intercultural Sport Challenge’ is to use sport as a tool for social inclusion of children with immigrant background, a population that is growing all over Europe. To do so, the six partners organizations will cooperate to produce a toolkit (a training format and a manual) for educators, teachers, youth workers and sport coaches that are involved in child education. With this toolkit they will learn how to turn sport into a practice that promotes inclusion in an intercultural learning environment. In addition to this, this project will contribute in sharing the culture of sport as instrument of nonformal education and social inclusion as well.

The first step of the project is to conduct a research in each partner country and at the European level with the objective to find out the needs of the target population of ‘Intercultural Sport Challenge’: which resources, skills and instruments do teachers, youth workers and sport coaches already possess, and could be further improved? Which resources, skills and instruments are they lacking, and could be provided by the project? And also, which ethnic minorities are present in the 5 partner countries? What are their needs with respect to sport, education through sport and social inclusion?

We will very soon begin to collect this information that will set the basis for the development of this project. We all are very enthusiastic and looking forward to start working together to face this ‘Intercultural Sport Challenge’.

Published: 26 February 2021