FC Emmen starts ‘Welcome through Football’ project
On 25th of June, a Welcome through Football project started at the asylum seekers’ centre in Emmen. More than 30 children enjoyed, under tropical conditions, the most beautiful game on earth: football.
Two groups were trained after receiving a FC Emmen training shirt and a FC Emmen bottle. A nice detail is that former refugee and former professional footballer Willy Lebowa is one of the coaches during the 12-week football project. During the 12 weeks of training, various FC Emmen core values are important. The core values are respect, role model, proactivity, professionality, cooperation, trust, discipline, ambition, fun, creativity, initiative and team spirit. The first training immediately showed that football is a universal language. The children have different backgrounds but had a lot of fun together.
EFDN members are sharing expertise and best practices
FC Emmen is together with EFDN members Werder Bremen, Apollon Limassol, 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.
