INCLUDE ME: Football as a tool for social inclusion

The partners started to discuss the possibility of working together in a project that tackled social inclusion through football after meeting in an international sport event. The staff, trainers and coaches, working with young adults identified that after the schooling system, children who grow up in marginalised areas, surrounded by people from difficult backgrounds, have difficulties to join leisure activities that make them feel included in the society and engage them in social life. Partners saw this situation in many other countries, where numerous examples happen in the described marginalised areas, like in Paris in France, where the situation started to radicalise. Partners also identified a tendency of young adults to leave the practice of sport after the schooling system and the two football organisations from Spain and Sweden saw that most of the coaches in young teams have no coaching education, many are parents of players, and most of them do it for the love of the sport. This is why the three partners believed it was important to apply for ths project: there existed an evident lack of training for coaches and a great opportunity for young adults to be educated as football coaches and bcome role models.

The project aimed from its kick off to achieve social inclusion of young adults in marginal areas (more concretely, Rinkeby and Tensta in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Tarragona province in Spain), using football as the main tool. The main objective was educating coaches to encourage football practice in a safe and inclusive environment and give them the tools to engage and develop young players so they don’t lose interest and keep practicing sport. Thus, main specific objectives were: - To create educational materials that train coaches in values such as teamwork, respect and empathy, through football, that can be used in their daily life. - To raise awareness about the potential of sport as a tool for social inclusion. - To support the engagement of young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds in community activities - To work out a common strategy to address common needs in education and sport - To reinforce capacity of the participating organisations to work transnationally and across sectors (sports, education, digitalization, etc.)

The project was structured in 8 activities, including management, dissemination, promotion, production and design of deliverables, implementation and organisation of local actions and pilots, and partner transnational meetings. The activities were implemented as follows: A1:Project management, quality assurance and dissemination A2: face-to-face transnational meeting was organised in Reus, Spain, where partners revised and agreed of important documents. A3: Guidelines based on good practices/case studies: partners produced an online data base with best practices and case studies of social inclusion through football and some guidelines for coachesTrainers. A4: Development of a project website and e-learning platform to embed all materials produced in the three project languages A5: Development of the materials for a training for adults who would like to be coaches A6: Organisation and delivery of the training in each partner country (two pilot courses were organised in Spain and Sweden) A7: Dissemination and promotion final conferences A8: Final transnational meeting in Sweden.

The produced results were: ·INCLUDE ME website and open education resource in English, Swedish and Spanish, with all project results, materials, partner contacts and other project-related relevant materials are made available to all audience. · A tool bank with all good practices and case studies targeting social inclusion through football. · Guidelines on how to improve coaching activities with young adults in order to foster social inclusion. · The Teaching and learning materials for training for adults who would like to be coaches in 5 training modules for coaches and trainers in English and partner languages. · 2 face-to-face pilot courses (one in Spain and one in Sweden) using the materials developed and coaches trained with project training materials. All products were developed in the three project languages (EN, SP & SWE), and were made available in online and offline printable format for download on the educational platform.