Football and social inclusion in Budapest

Football represents an effective way for social inclusion

May 16, 2011

More than 10 children aged 11 to 14 from Ferentari and a representative of our organization attended the “Football for Opportunities” International Workshop in Budapest, at the invitation of the Polgar Foundation, between May 13 and 14. The children are enrolled in the football classes at the Alternative Education Club, is financially supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Bucharest, the Soros Foundation in Romania, the European Commission and the Roma Education Fund.

The workshop included a one day conference and several football trainings coordinated by the Hungarian junior national team’s coach and ex-international player with more than 30 selections in the Hungarian national team.

The conference topics concentrated on exploring ways to include highly gifted Roma children in the national sports hierarchy based on their capabilities thus eliminating the drawback of their limited opportunities.

The organizers and the participants tried to answer simple but effective questions like how could the talent of deprived children suffering from discrimination contribute to the national competitive sports? and why do we let so many gifted children get unnoticed?

After a series of debates some conclusions were drawn: there is a need to strengthen the civil society’s involvement in the path of young gifted children from the ghetto to professional sports. The participants considered that this is one of the most important issues in the battle for curbing discrimination, intolerance, racism and violence.

Also, the Romanian children had the opportunity to be exposed to an international and multicultural environment by playing a football match with other children from five countries around Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, FYR Macedonia, Poland and Serbia). More than 100 children took part in the event at Budapest.

Not the least the workshop made possible new connections between people and organizations that share the same goals and interests within the European Community.