Inspirational and valuable day for MDT Community Champions partners
On 14 April, the first ‘Train the Trainer’ day of the MDT Community Champions took place at Feyenoord Rotterdam. At the beginning of the day, all present clubs presented their progress on the project and the problems they encountered. During these presentations, Feyenoord gave tips to the participating clubs and told them how they approach these topics themselves. Therefore, Feyenoord is positioned as the knowledge partner in this project.
After the presentations, it was time for a boxing lesson and assertiveness training by Nouchka Fontijn, a Dutch former Olympic boxer. This training is used by Feyenoord to make young people more resilient and self-confident. This was a fun and educational course in which the trainers experienced for themselves that boxing is a good way to make young people more resilient. After lunch, the trainers received an explanation of the new way of registering participants and everyone could ask their final questions.
Community Champions uses the appeal of professional football in the Netherlands, eight professional football clubs from the project partner Eredivisie and the Keuken Kampioen Divisie, and the social power of football to reach and involve young people in a unique football-based MDT programme. The clubs that are participating in this year’s CCL are Feyenoord, FC Emmen, RKC Waalwijk, Excelsior, FC Twente, Vitesse, De Graafschap and Sparta Rotterdam.
The opportunity for the young people not only to be involved in the club and the neighbourhood, but also to become a real ambassador for ‘their’ club has a status-enhancing effect, which plays a role in the social circles in which the young people find themselves. Within Community Champions the participating young people not only get the chance to give something back to their own neighbourhood, but by taking part in workshops and organising neighbourhood contributions they can also earn points in the Community Champions competition. This competition ultimately determines who is the Community Champion of The Netherlands.
