Club Brugge Foundation and Partners Leaving No One Behind

Club Brugge Foundation and Partners Leaving No One Behind

During these difficult times, many people who were already struggling before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic are now more at risk of being left out of the picture. Certain target groups are under the threat of becoming completely isolated from society, have difficulties getting information about the changing rules regarding the Coronavirus and lose touch with their networks.

In football lingo, those who were flirting with offside may now find themselves completely offside. Club Brugge Foundation, the city of Bruges and Centrum Algemeen Welzihnswerk (General Wellness Centre) North-West Flanders are joining hands to address this potential issue. They are renewing and strengthening their commitment within the sport-social project ‘Club Brugge Younited’ to help socially vulnerable people from Bruges move forward in life through the power of football.

The project partners will organise weekly training sessions at the Jan Breydel Stadium as Club Brugge Younited brings together some 20 socially vulnerable people to play football. These meetings and various team building activities give the players a structure to build foundations. The aims include teaching them to win, allowing them to build positive self-image and making them part of a close-knit team.

Club Brugge Younited will begin their 12th football season on September 7. The three project partners made this official with a signing ceremony in Bruges’ Sint-Donaaspark. The site is also the mobile location for the youth organisation Route 36 which received some financing from Club Brugge Foundation drawn from the sale of masks.  

“The concept of the mobile office is very simple. The ‘camionette’ (small lorry) of the prevention workers joins the community sports caravan, one rolls out the awning, sets up the folding tables and one is gone. The youngster can pass by to say hello or to get acquainted with Route 36. Although we mainly focus on the youngsters in the neighbourhood, everyone is welcome; a local resident on a stroll and parents who come to enjoy their children playing give us useful information about the ins and outs of the neighbourhood,” said Alderman of Prevention Mathijs Goderis.

Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn (Public Centre for Social Welfare) chairman Pablo Annys stated: “With Route 36, we mainly want to invest where young people come first. The employees have already grasped this by going on the road with their mobile desks. In this way we can reach the young people more directly and lower the threshold to our operation even further.”

“We have noticed over the past few months that this corona crisis is particularly severe for people in difficulty. Their already fragile network has been put even more to the test. That is why we continued to keep in regular contact with our players, together with the project partners, despite the fact that physical training was not possible. The desire of the participants to start again and get the ball rolling is already sky-high,” noted Club Brugge Foundation coordinator Peter Gheysen.