TAKEN - Sustainable Karate Partnership

The TAKEN project aims to involve two neighbouring Balkan countries in common activities to explore the opportunities the sport of karate offers to tackle discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin and encourage inclusion in society through sports. The objective of the participating organisations is to promote the karate sport as valuable instrument for of developing personal and social skills and skills for learning and promoting tolerance, solidarity, inclusion among youngsters from ethnic minorities, aged between 8 and 16, in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. The sport of karate has been recognised by both participating karate clubs as a popular and relevant approach to social integration in the civil society. Our choice to involve these two particular countries is derived from the fact that being neighbouring countries they somewhat face similar challenges when it comes to integration of ethnic minorities. Thus, our perception that common efforts are needed. In order to implement our project we propose to implement several sets of activities. Apart from the purely administrative and project steering activities, we will develop participatory approach methods to involve selected participants in project activities. We will organise focus groups in each participating country, with representatives of the target group in order to understand their perception of the role karate has played in their lives. Based on the focus groups, we will elaborate a short training manual for karate coaches to equip them with the necessary competences to further boost minority integration. By engaging in project activities we aim to overcome a psychological barrier when meeting new and different athletes / participants / and to improve the value system of the participants from diverse ethnicity and gender, through international communication and dialogue.