PROJECT TITLE: Sport hAPPenings – New sports meeting places for young people of all nationalities
CLIENT: Ministry of Labor and Social Policies
BODY CREATOR: NATIONAL PGS Salesian Youth Salesians
ASSOCIATED INSTITUTIONS: UNIEDA – Italian Union of Adult Education, Labos Social Policy Laboratory Foundation
RECIPIENTS:
- Direct beneficiaries: young Italians and foreigners selected by PGS for the sporting activities carried out in the new meeting places and for the Laboratories on the sense of community, in the territory of the following: 19 regions involved in the project: Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna , Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Marche, Molise, Piedmont, Apulia, Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany, Trentino-Alto Adige, Umbria, Valle d’Aosta, Veneto.
- Indirect beneficiaries: Family members of young Italians and foreigners involved in project activities, in terms of a significant increase quality of life; All young Italians and foreigners living in the intervention areas, who will be able to benefit from a new location permanent youth grouping that will remain available to the local community
DURATION: 18 months
DESIGN IDEA The project intends to promote the social integration of young immigrant boys, in particular second generation, through the creation and development of places of youth aggregation, animated by conventional and unconventional sporting activities, located in school premises or less frequented public spaces.
Places and activities will also be promoted through an app with social network functions, which will help to expand participation and allow these places to become points of reference for the local community.
Unconventional sports (street basketball, Dodgeball, flag football, freesbee ultimate, etc.) lend themselves to favoring sports in territorial contexts without spaces and opportunities for meeting and gathering available to young people. This is due to their wide accessibility – they can be practiced outdoors and practically everywhere – and because of the limited number of rules that encourage creativity and freedom of expression through movement. They are also sports that are often popular in other countries, therefore potentially familiar to many young people of foreign origin, who, however, until now, had not had opportunities to practice them, except among compatriots.
For this reason PGS intends to animate also through these sports of places that can become a reference point for young Italians and foreigners of an entire territorial community, thus nurturing the fruitful encounter and mutual exchange between different cultures, and promoting the possibility of develop a sense of shared community, even through targeted workshops with children.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
1) The creation or development of meeting places for young Italians and foreigners present in the territorial community where conventional or unconventional sports activities will be practiced
2) The creation of an App with Social functions called “Sport hAPPenings”, accessible via smartphone and web portal, with the function of promoting the aggregation places created and self-managed by the young people of all nationalities
3) A research for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the creation of aggregation places for the integration of foreign children within the territorial social fabric
4) Tournaments and conclusive events with which the results of the project will be disseminated and the population will be made aware of the issue of integration through sport.
CONTACT PERSON: Anna Calvaruso