Members enjoy 7th EFDN Conference on historical ground

The 7th EFDN Conference at the Ibrox Stadium of Rangers FC in Glasgow had the honour to be officially opened by the Scottish minister for Public Health and Sport, Mrs. Aileen Campbell. After being introduced by the hosts Caj Sohal and former professional football player Pat Nevin, Mrs. Campbell showed great admiration for the work that the members of EFDN are doing in the community. “I follow EFDN and its members and they are doing a great job. I know by personal experience how much football means for many people and that it is indeed a fact that football has the power to change lives of a lot of people. In a way, it changed mine too. I would like to thank all the clubs and foundations for all the efforts they are making every day to help others.”

At approximately 9.00 am all delegates of the EFDN members arrived at the Ibrox Stadium and immediately experienced that they entered historical ground. The Ibrox Stadium may, like all other stadiums in the world, may have a pitch, surrounded by stands, but the home of Rangers FC is also a museum. Walking through the aisles of Ibrox everyone was amazed by all the pictures and relics of ancient times. Rangers FC goes back to 1872, which explains everything.

Best practices

“I am so anxious to hear what all members have to say today”, said Iva Cigrovskij, present at the conference as a guest. “My club, Dinamo Zagreb, is very aware of its position in society. We have started some projects and I am here to learn more about Community Social Responsibility.”
Iva and all the other representatives of professional football clubs and/or its foundations got what they came for. A lot of best practices, successful new projects, different ways of working, interesting ideas and new developments were shared by NAC Breda (non-member), SPFL Trust, Aberdeen FC, Hapoel Tel Aviv/Mifalot, Everton, Benfica and Paris Saint-Germain in so-called breakout sessions. “It was so good to hear how Benfica is working”, said Dawn Bracegirdle of the Manchester United Foundation. “I was astonished to hear how big the fan base of Benfica is. It is almost as big as ours! Obviously, they do a lot of things in the community that we do as well, but they have initiated a project in which they teach children that are in prison. That was something new for me! So also for us it is good to be here, because we still want to learn every day about Community Social Responsibility. You can always do better!”

Another member was impressed by the presentation of Hapoel Tel Aviv/Mifalot. “Over 300 educational programmes, wow! That is incredible”, said Irena Smetanova of Sparta Prague. “We have only just started with CSR and I am really wondering whether the programmes of Mifalot would work in Prague as well. They are speaking of children and youngsters with little self-confidence and little self-esteem, but sometimes I think that in Prague they just may have too much of this. The youngsters are so arrogant that I doubt they would enter in such programmes. Whether it is possible that this arrogance is just an attitude? Could be. Let’s hope so! In any case, it is worthwhile investigating and that’s just what we are going to do. It would be great if we could implement some of the projects and activities that are presented here today in our CSR programmes, that’s for sure.”
Like for instance ‘The Stadium as a Classroom’ of NAC Breda. “We are working with drop-outs”, says Danny Evertse. “In our project these children do not go to school, they go to NAC. That makes a whole lot of difference, I tell you!” An Gaëlle Benedic of Paris Saint Germain came to tell that the foundation of PSG has built a Red & Blue School in a deprived neighbourhood. “It is an after school activity and the wonderful thing is that the children love to come there. Even in vacation time they would like to come to the Red & Blue School. That is how you would like it if you start such a programme. The aim was to give them back the desire to learn by outing sport at the heart of the educational approach. We have evaluated this project and the outcome was that good that we decided to build another ‘École Rouge & Blue’.”

Dementia

Nikky Reid of Scottish Professional Football League spoke about a programme in which people are encouraged to eat healthy and do more sports, in order to lose weight and – in some cases – even get free of diabetes. And the Aberdeen FC Community Trust shed a light on the growing number of people that cope with dementia. They use football to help people with dementia feel understood, valued and maybe even able to recollect highlights of their moments of glory as a football player or supporter. This works wonderfully well.
Everton in the Community had a presentation about its Disability Programme and Benfica spoke about its efforts to tackle the problem of children leaving school before graduating. Because yes, also in Lisbon drop-outs are a common phenomenon. PSV Eindhoven dwelled on its price-winning project ‘PSV United’, which is already active for five years now, getting bigger in numbers of participants every year.
Of course Rangers Charity Foundation got the chance – as the home team – to present almost all its projects ‘live’ and show all the participants of the conference the Study Support Centre and other venues they use for their projects. “We aim to be a force for the good on behalf of the entire Rangers Family and I may say that we have a lot of success with our programmes”, said Connal Cochrane. “It goes without saying that we want to continue doing our social work and even increase our activities and the number of people that we are helping doing all this. Because that’s what it is all about.” After all the information the participants were treated to a tour through the impressive Ibrox Stadium of Rangers FC.

Good job

The day came to an end with a panel discussion around youth & staff exchanges. “Till we joined EFDN it was a dream, being able to organise youth & staff exchanges. Since then we did quite a few already”, said Keren Lavi of Hapoel Tel Aviv/Mifalot. “They were all great experiences, both for us as for the children and staff members. It is fascinating to learn from each other. Despite the language barrier all went incredibly well. The children just communicated through football, that was an amazing thing to see.”

Dawn Bracegirdle came with an example of a participant that really changed completely as a person after a youth exchange. “The guy’s name is Tristan. Believe me, he was really too cool for this planet, with such a bad attitude. But he came back a different boy, as a totally changed person. Really very special to have seen that happen. And it was not a short term-change, he still is the guy that came back from that youth exchange in Rotterdam. I would say: well done Feyenoord Rotterdam, good job. Tristan is the living proof that exchanges really work well.”
Tomorrow the attendees will experience another beautiful day of speed dating, presentations, breakout sessions and networking.