Social sport

‘Social sport’: I just came up with the term. I like it.

What I mean with it is the use of sport in social work. As a methodology. 

Sport can serve a number of purposes, from enhancing the mental health and well-being of individuals, to the regional cooperation and the inclusion of refugees in local communities.

That’s social innovation: the merging of unforeseen ideas and usage of old and new concepts and combinations to find solutions for pressing problems. 

That's thinking outside of the box.

The first things that come to the minds of people when one mentions sport, are usually corruption, business, competition, national pride, etc.

At which moment in history did knighthood disappear from sport?

Old-school sport was about knighthood, honor, health; many sportists would protect weaker people and many of them turned out to be the war heroes in the XX century.

I remember when I was a kid, how I enjoyed it. 

I was born and bred in a village. Now, if you’re raised in a rural area in the Western Balkans, your opportunities and options in life are quite limited. In my village, there were no fancy football terrains, no basketball courts, and among all things, no awareness about the importance of sport.

Some villages in the Western Balkans, however, are traversed by rivers. Mine was. And that’s how I learned to swim. In the big, strong and mighty Sava river.

While there were no sport courts, nor arenas, the imagination of the children were abundant. Every green field was a possible Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium, every wall had the potential to get a wheel fixed to itself as a substitute for an actual basketball hoop. Our professional playing courts were open fields, deserted yards and our streets.

The village is a place of bonding, of solidarity and friendship. A place to share time and space with others. If that's not inclusion, I don't know what is!

When I grew older, I moved to Belgrade, and started working on social inclusion. Since I was 14 I was learning and later developed various creative methodologies to attract young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and help them work on their personal development, their employability, to building their social networks, etc.

Reaching out to them wasn’t easy. Coming from where I came from, I knew exactly why. We were offering something that was not what they were used to.

We organized various creative workshops and ‘youth clubs’.  Youth club is a place where young people can meet and participate in a variety of activities towards their personal development. But where in ‘normal life’ you have a ‘youth club’? Young people from such backgrounds are not familiar with such a concept. They know about football, school, cinema, parties, drinking, etc. For them, even library is more normal than a ‘youth club’.

Some of their habits were healthy, some weren't.

Now being older, I totally fell in love with using sport as a methodology for social inclusion. Why?

- If you work with refugees, language is not barrier everyone speaks language of sport. It's easy to understand a ball.

- Being rich or poor, the ball has its own rules.

- It's engaging and not boring like a workshop about ‘active listening’.

-  People instinctively support each other and collaborate. Everyone matters. Many sport disciplines are team sports, so you learn team-work skills at the same time.

- Sport workers are great Youth workers by default. They live a healthy lifestyle and are good at inspiring other people as well as great motivators. This is exactly the kind of influence young people need to counter the type of risky behaviors which are characteristic during adolescence.

- In post-conflict areas, activities involving sport (especially team sports) be a first step to bring the different sides involved in the conflict to openly cooperate. Much before official politicians acknowledge that they are up to some peace building and neighboring relations.

- It's great fun for all generations, genders, etc. Great for intergenerational solidarity which is much needed in Europe as the continent is ‘getting older’ in age. So it's also great for promoting active and dignified ageing.

If you accompany this with good talks, discussions, inputs and debriefings, you can teach young people a valuable life lessons and build up some positive attitude.

At the moment, one startup from Belgrade is looking for the partnerships in this field, amongst others, Sportifico LLC

I learned a lot by observing the process under the Fairplay initiative and the Girls Football Festival "Footbal Zajedno"  in Vienna. I saw how much the imitative meant to the refugee girls who attended, and the extent to which it served as an empowering tool that built up strong connections and solidarity in the group.

Here's a quote from my email to the coordinator of the project:

"The Football festival for Girls is an amazing opportunity to promote social inclusion, provide mental health support, healing and personal development, to girls of all backgrounds, both coming from general population and from the disadvantaged population (e.g. refugees, victims of the domestic violence, etc).

It was a valuable experience for everyone involved.

I highly recommend this initiative to volunteers of all ages and backgrounds; it is a great getaway and opportunity to learn a lot from the girls. I guarantee you that you will find yourself inspired by their strength, their willpower and joy for life.

Seeing them smile was without doubt the best part of the festival. The days were filled with laughter, passion for winning, collaboration, empathy and team work. It was great to witness how girls would console the loosing team and how they would score fewer goals than they would have otherwise, against the much weaker opponent they were playing against.

In addition, I would like to add that it would be great to fund-raise more resources into the preparatory meetings. To have a few meetings about football, and few about communication skills, intercultural learning, team-building and work. Finally to create an online social platform for a greater sustainability of the project and to encourage the involved girls to stay in touch with their newly built support network.”

If you are interested to contribute in any way towards using sport for community development and generally for development of human potentials, social inclusion etc, please contact me at d.zacero@gmail.com

 

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