GNK Dinamo – shortlisted for the ECA CSR Award 2017
Recently, the ECA presented the shortlisted projects for the ECA Awards 2017. One of the 9 clubs nominated for the ‘Best Community and Social Responsibility Programme’ is GNK Dinamo with the project “Feel the Game = See the Game”.
Until the #ECAAward Ceremony on 4th of September in Geneva, we will present each day one of the shortlisted projects to highlight the impact, the clubs and their foundations are having in their local communities. Yesterday, we already introduced the shortlisted project of EFDN member KAA Gent.
GNK Dinamo: ‘Feel the Game = See the Game’
After developing several activities for club supporters with disabilities in the past, GNK Dinamo launched a special initiative for blind and visually impaired fans. The club had the ambition of creating an atmosphere within the stadium that would give visually impaired and blind fans the possibility to feel and see the game, despite their disability. Therefore, it implemented audio-descriptive commentary service.
Main objectives:
- Integrating blind and visually impaired fans into the club and community
- Making them feel as their disability does not exist
- Raising awareness of obstacles that blind and visually impaired fans are facing
Project description:
On a daily basis, GNK Dinamo is fighting against all types of discrimination, racism and intolerance through different projects. With the creation of the ‘Feel the Game = See the Game’ initiative, the club aimed at going one step further. Implementing audio-descriptive commentary should give their blind and visually impaired fans the opportunity to fell and see a game. Thereby, GNK Dinamo became the first club in Croatia to offer audio-description in football stadia.
In cooperation with the City of Zagreb, the Zagreb Association of Blind people and the AS, Dinamo launched the audio description service for blind and visually impaired fans at the Maksimir stadium.
For that reason, the Coratian derby Dinamo-Hajduk became a very special event, it was a large step towards improving fan experience in Croatia. The game was attended by 20 blind and visually impaired fans that were able to follow the match listening to a live commentator. The project has had a great impact on the fans, which were able to follow the game in a much more inclusive way.
GNK Dinamo states that they are aware that audio description for blind and visually impaired fans is a very common practice in other European and world clubs. However, for the Croation club it was a large step and great achievement. GNK Dinamo was able to reach its objective of giving their blind and visually impaired fans a great match experience, next to that, better inclusion in football stadia was worked towards to.
The weeks following the implementation of the audio description, a wide range of media channels actively reported on GNK Dinamo’s powerful project.
The initiative received very large positive feedback, from fans, project participants and the media, leading to a high amount of request from visually impaired and blind people, who expressed their interest in joining matches.
