The three-year project has been developed by the fairplay initiative at VIDC together with partners of the SPIN network. The aim of the SPIN Refugees project is to enhance the social inclusion and participation of asylum seekers and refugees on the local sport level through training, education and capacity-building of local sport stakeholders. For details, go to the Project Outline (see below).
Kurt Wachter, SPIN coordinator says: “That our project has been selected is also recognition of our ongoing work with refugees since 2011. This new project will provide the SPIN network with a unique opportunity to further develop social integrative sport interventions on a grassroots level. It’s key to empower refugee initiatives and harness the role of refugees, in particular women, as coaches and volunteers in sport clubs”.
SPIN Partnership
The project will be carried out through transnational partnerships including nine EU countries. It involves refugees and asylum seekers as well as clubs and sport organisations, national experts, trainers and trainees, supporting NGOs and initiatives as well as FAs and other key sport stakeholders.
Implementing partners include the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), Camino, Unione Italiana Sport Per Tutti (UISP), Portuguese Players Union (SJPF), Huis voor Beweging, Liikkukaa – Sport for all, Mahatma Gandhi Human Rights Organisation, Austrian Sports Organisation (BSO) and the International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA). The Danish organisation ISCA was also successful with their bid for “Networking and dissemination” (Lot 2), with the task of establishing a European networking platform with the ten projects in Lot 1 (Organisation of sport activities in order to promote integration and social inclusion of refugees).
The SPIN Refugees project will kick off in January 2020 and will last until the end of December 2022. The European Commission will co-fund the project with an amount of 295.000 €.
Call 2019 – Sport as a tool for integration and social inclusion of refugees
The last European Commission call follows the 2017 and 2018 editions, aimed at promoting sport-related projects for the social inclusion of refugees in host communities in EU Member States – either by organising sport activities, or by creating networks and platforms of projects and disseminating good practices.
The potential of sport as a tool for social inclusion has now been well documented. Consequently the opportunities that sport projects provide to support social inclusion of refugees in host communities are more and more exploited in many EU Member States
Download: SPIN Refugees Project Outline
