Nobody Offside Tournament was kicked off by NEC Doelbewust
Today, on 24th of May, the international “Nobody Offside” special football tournament was kicked off in Wijchen, a village nearby Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
10 Dutch and 2 international teams, from SL Benfica and Hapoel Tel Aviv are taking part in the week-long exchange that has been initiated for children with a physical, mental or motor disability.
Football is with more than 1.2 million participants the most popular sport in the Netherlands, also for children with a disability, it is very attractive. N.E.C Doelbewust, the foundation of football club N.E.C Nijmegen is therefore aiming at increasing the possibilities for those children to participate in football related activities.
One of the ways in which N.E.C wants to integrate children with a disability into football is through the “Nobody Offside” international special football tournament. The event is being organised in cooperation with SC Woezik, OSRN, Brownies & downieS and Uniek Sporten regio Nijmegen.
Football based activities and workshops focused on life skills
Next to football based activities, the exchange focuses on life skill development workshops, which shall help the participants to integrate into society more easily.
Each day of the exchange will take place in a different village near Nijmegen, giving the Dutch and especially international participants the opportunity to get to know different environments. Next to a day in Nijmegen, the teams will be spending time in Wijchen, Malden and Beuningen.
A tournament in four different places
The location for the first day of the tournament was the castle of Wijchen and the grand market of the village. At the castle, the participants took part in two workshops for physical activity and self-defence. On the grand market, a football field had been set up, on which the teams played matches against each other.
Icebreakers helped the international group to get to know each other.
During the next days, the teams will keep playing football together and take part in cooking sessions, lessons on self-presentations and they jointly will be present at a theatre play.
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