Cultural understanding through football at Apollon Limassol FC

Cultural understanding through football at Apollon Limassol FC

This week, EFDN has visited its member Apollon Limassol FC to discuss the current status of the “Welcome through Football” project. Our Project Manager attended also an education and a training session in Cyprus. 

The first part of the session saw the participants talking about anger and expressing their feelings and experiences for example by drawing pictures and working together in pairs. Together with the community coaches, the children and youth discussed the perceptions of anger within different cultures. The project participants learned a lot about each other and got an understanding of different cultures.

The second part of the session included physical activities and, of course, playing football. The different exercises during the football session were mainly team building activities. The young people experienced true team spirit and how it is to succeed as a team.

Pan-European collaboration

Apollon Limassol FC is together with EFDN members Werder Bremen, FC Emmen, KAA Gent and Everton FC part of the Welcome through Football project. It is a 12 months project with the purpose of sharing expertise, experiences and best practices of community programmes that focus on young refugees.

The Welcome through Football programme aims to share best practices and deliver a football based social inclusion methodology directed at reaching and working with young refugees from the ages of 7 through to 25 years old. All five clubs currently deliver their own different football-based community programmes with a focus on social inclusion, integration and acceptation of refugees in their region and Europe. Using this experience and expertise, the project intends to develop and deliver a comprehensive football-based social inclusion methodology, as well as to train refugees to become coaches to assist with their inclusion into society and the labour market.