Youth sports for breaking cultural barriers and active citizenship

1 Inevitably the present facts on the ground speak for themselves. It is estimated that the number of asylum applications is around 1.8 million people. The vast majority are young people. If we are talking about how the activities of sports may assist these young people to integrate themselves into the social fabric, then it follows that integration through sports requires extensive research along with best practices on how to bring in mission these processes as effectively as possible. Our work and scope of this project was clearly based on the fact that these people will become productive citizens if then are given the venues to do so. 2 First of all because the whole framework of this particular project was interesting and quite appealing to us and we indeed believed that why working towards exploring the objectives not only would we able to contribute something but it appeared to us that there is real promise through sports in conjunction with integration. We would have the chance to create innovative programs and explore a variety of possibilities on how to be or become more effective in regards to the goals we underlined. And by the end of the project,

Assume that all of a sudden, many young people (asylum seekers/immigrants) come into a local community and that their number is not so small. Unless the state or the local village/community/city gives them the tools to feel welcome and integrate themselves then they will enter into a ghetto mentality thus what follows is to isolate themselves. It is a given that many new immigrants might not speak the language or have limited capability in speaking the language. It follows that most likely they will not know the local culture, norms, history, customs of the land they came to reside. The fastest, cheapest, most productive way to associate the new locals (immigrants) is to engage them in sports activities who does not like for example to play soccer (basketball or for that matter any sports). If an immigrant father sees his/her child get accepted to play soccer in the local football club for example, he/she will feel very quickly accepted his/her family will not feel hostility and they will not attain an isolation mentality. Sport or a format that breaks down inhibitions both from the native local people and the new arrivals of people. In that way structural and systemic changes may attain a rapid pace using common values and quite