Stichting De Betrokken Spartaan will join new Community Champions programme

Stichting De Betrokken Spartaan will join new Community Champions programme

Stichting De Betrokken Spartaan is looking forward to the new project Community Champions Sparta Rotterdam. Preparations for this are in full swing at the moment; from the beginning of March, the first group of ‘Community Champions’ will be starting on their very first programme.

Community Champions is a project in cooperation with seven other professional football clubs, EFDN and the Eredivisie. Community Champions uses the attraction of professional football in the Netherlands, eight professional football clubs from the Eredivisie and the Keuken Kampioen Divisie, and the social power of football to reach and involve young people in a unique MDT trajectory based on football.

The community service project Community Champions focuses on young people between 15 and 27 years old. In groups, they follow a sixteen-week programme in the stadium, volunteering an average of five hours a week (outside of school hours). During these weeks, they work on skills such as communication, innovation, entrepreneurship and discovering talents through workshops and internships with various employers. They put these skills into practice by organising neighbourhood activities, district training courses, events for young and old or participating in the youth council.

In addition to the social impact that the young people make, their efforts are rewarded with a recognised MDT certificate, which looks good on their CV. In addition, through the Community Champions points system they save for nice products such as tracksuits, match tickets, vouchers and merchandise. They also “battle it out” in a local and national football competition with the other Community Champion Clubs: Excelsior Rotterdam, Feyenoord, De Graafschap, Vitesse, FC Emmen, RKC Waalwijk and FC Twente. All these components lead to top performance: in the lives of the young people, for the neighbourhood and for society!