Inter Campus focus on local initiatives

Inter Campus focus on local initiatives

European football clubs and their foundations have been busy as the Covid-19 pandemic raging worldwide. Ranging from calling elderly supporters, collaborating with other organisations to provide meals to supporting healthcare workers and institutions, their responses to the current situation have been impressive. With large swathes of the world emerging from lock down, there is a sustained effort to resume existing initiatives alongside creating and implementing new Community and Social Responsibility programmes.

Inter Campus, the charity foundation arm of Italian giants Inter Milan founded in 1997, is one of those looking ahead as activities resume in this new normal. Despite the strict lock down in Italy, there were plenty of initiatives in place to cater for the most vulnerable.

Even with travel and field work suspended to protect everyone involved with the Campus – children, coaches, coordinators and staff alike – operations continued remotely. This was made possible using videos put together by Inter’s technical staff that offered games to play at home available to households  across the world. Additionally, there was a project was running in Milan targeting children with learning disabilities in collaboration with Onlus.

The videos were designed to address the specific needs of these children and make sure that these little ‘Intercampista’ did not miss out, as they were unfortunately particularly affected by the necessary closure of the Campus in recent months. Another outstanding example of social enterprise during these trying times has been the Sport Therapy project, which involves children undergoing treatment at the paediatric onco-haematology ward of the Monza hospital in collaboration with the Maria Letizia Verga Committee. It involved the organisation of weekly training sessions with the children as soon as they were admitted and throughout their stay in the ward.

These activities were never suspended, and Inter Campus Coach Roberto Redaelli never ceased in his efforts to introduce some fun and games into the lives of the children in helping them achieve something as close to normalcy as possible. The University of Milano-Bicocca has demonstrated that it achieved positive results on a medical level, too.

The ‘Gioco al Centro: Playgrounds for all children’ programme also did not cease its operations. The project aims to provide picnic areas with rides and games in public parks in each of the nine Milan zones – City, South-West, South-East and Martesana. It is sponsored by the Milan Community Foundation of which Inter President Carlotta Moratti is advisor. Come September 2021, a fourth ‘inclusive park’ will open at the Giardini Lucarelli in Zone 3 with facilities for all children including those with disabilities and Inter Campus will also be involved in this important project.