Community Champions League

Project details

Country

Europe

Year

2019

Topic

Social Cohesion

The Community Champions League is an EFDN project in partnership with nine community-engaged football clubs from the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Norway, Portugal, Hungary, Belgium and Germany. NAC Breda, Feyenoord, Aberdeen FC, Chelsea FC, Club Brugge, SV Werder Bremen, Vålerenga Fotball, Ferencvarosi TC and SL Benfica deliver the Pan-European programme in collaboration with EFDN.

The Community Champions League is a social street football competition organised locally in nine cities in eight different European countries, where the participating teams can win more points through Fair-Play, Fair Support and Volunteering in community activities than by winning their street football matches.

With the aim of promoting social integration through sport, the Community Champions League provides the opportunity for people from different cultures to come together to build relationships and friendships while breaking down barriers through the prevention of violence, racism and intolerance in grassroots sports and their communities.

CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

The Community Champions League project highlights the key element of “Cultural understanding” in order to generate and emphasise mutual respect while creating confidence amongst the participants and building strong relationships between young people in their communities.

The project is focused on fair play, respect and tolerance, promoting social cohesion, equal opportunities and participation in sports for young boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 15 years. More specifically, the local Community Champions League puts young people with different backgrounds from the same neighbourhood together to compete as a team against their peers from other parts of the city in order to become the Community Champions of their city. The participating clubs organise workshops, community contributions and other events to promote volunteering and active citizenship. Thanks to a dynamic engagement of the whole neighbourhood within the programme, strong and active communities are therefore naturally being built within the cities.

THE COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS LEAGUE PROGRAMME OBJECTIVES ARE:

Tackle racism, discrimination and violence in sport
Social inclusion in and through sport
Promote social cohesion through sport
Promote active citizenship
Promote voluntary activity in sport
Promote the positive involvement of parents and neighbours
Social inclusion and acceptance of refugees and migrants
Enhance social and bridging capital of participants
Reduction of small street crime
Teaching valuable life skills
Promote a healthy lifestyle

Our Participants

Aberdeen FC: “The Community Champions League is really special because it has brought together and introduced two parts of Aberdeen to each other. Two different communities that are at opposite ends, that probably wouldn’t meet, probably wouldn’t come together without the project. Children, staffs and schools from opposite sides are besides each other and are all working with a football club”.

Werder Bremen: “For us, it’s a great opportunity to involve kids from different backgrounds, from different ages and we want to bring together females and males. It’s about fair play, about coming together in the community, supporting each other and creating good values behind the Community Champions League, to create something special and motivate people. It’s also about bringing forward your personality and participants are supporting one another”.

Community Champions League

Project details