Community Champions Final Event a great success

Community Champions Final Event a great success

Last Saturday, on 9 July, the final event of the Eredivisie Community Champions League took place. And the location of this event was very special: The KNVB Campus in Zeist, the headquarters of the Dutch Football Association!

Community Champions uses the appeal 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 engage young people in a unique football-based MDT programme. The opportunity for the young people not only to be involved in the club and the neighbourhood but also to become real ambassadors for ‘their’ club has a status-enhancing effect, which plays a role in the social circles in which the young people find themselves. In Community Champions, the participating young people not only get the chance to give something back to their own neighbourhood but by participating in workshops and organising neighbourhood contributions they can also earn points in the Community Champions competition. This competition ultimately determines who is the Community Champion of The Netherlands.

Since March, the clubs started this Social Services project in 16 weeks youngsters go on a journey to discover the best version of themselves by playing football together, participating in workshops & organising activities in the neighbourhoods.

At the beginning of the Final Day, the participants were taken to the complex with the players’ buses from their own clubs. Not only football was played at the event, but there were also workshops given by judoka Roy Meyer and boxer Nouchka Fontijn.

There were also Community Champions ‘Games’ in which the various teams were allowed to think up their own game, which the other teams then played.

RKC Waalwijk was the big winner of the competition and the online challenge. And takes the Community Champions Cup home!

THE PROJECT PARTNERS

• Eredivisie
• Feyenoord Rotterdam
• FC Emmen
• Excelsior Rotterdam
• De Graafschap
• RKC Waalwijk
• Sparta Rotterdam
• FC Twente
• Vitesse Arnhem

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS)