Summer Holidays for ‘Welcome Through Football’ participants of Naoberschap United Foundation
On Friday,July 23, the last activity of the Welcome Through Football project took place of our member the FC Emmen Naoberschap United Foundation. At the Refugee Center in Emmen the 25 participating children and young people trained fanatically one last time. They can now enjoy the summer period. The project will be continued after the summer holidays.
The Welcome Through Football project is organised in cooperation with EFDN, while the project is financially supported by the UEFA Foundation for Children, the Erasmus+ programme and M&GEZOND! The project, which consists of several phases of twelve weeks, aims to successfully integrate young refugees into the Netherlands through football.
During the last phase the young refugees participated twice a week in a football training led by FC Emmen trainers Jan Bosman, Henri de Leeuw, Dave Waalwijk and Nikki Klein. During each training session, different football exercises were offered. The trainers ensured that all participants could develop at his or her own level. However, the focus was not only on the football part, in a playful manner, attention was also paid to the norms and values in Dutch society such as respect, discipline and dealing with others.
Project leader Marcel Sulmann looks back on the past twelve weeks with a good feeling: “I have been allowed to organise and coordinate the Welcome to Our Football project for almost three years now. Each activity puts a smile on the faces of the participants, even though each of them has a different background and story. It is admirable how the children and young people interact with each other. For example, the older participants ensure that the younger ones can join in. This shows that football is a universal language that everyone speaks!”
Interested? Check our Welcome Through Football programme here
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