REWINS is a 24-month project designed with a goal to encourage social inclusion and equal opportunities in sport, specifically for refugee women.
The main project aims for REWINS are to promote a positive attitude towards refugee women in sports, identify refugees’ barriers and good practices for participation in local sport activities, provide opportunities for refugee women at grassroots level, raise awareness of the refugee population and mobilise better inclusion of refugees in local sports organisations.
The direct target group for the project will be refugee women age 18 and over, along with coaches and local communities. Outputs will include the development of training courses for coaches and the formation of women’s football teams in the selected partner countries, based on the methodologies of the training courses.
Partners in this project are: Organisation Earth (Greece), Girl Power Organisation (Denmark), Polisportiva San Precario (Italy) and the Fare network. The Fare network is lead partner in this project.
Fare network together with the REWINS partners: Organisation Earth, Polisportiva San Precario and Girl Power Organisation is proud to present the REWINS Training Course for sport organisations and coaches working with refugees.
The Training Course can be used to deliver seminar and training courses around the following themes:
The document offers detailed information on the themes, related good practices from Europe and non-formal educational sport activities around culture, identity, teamwork and cooperation.
Seminars for coaches working with refugee women were held in Greece, Italy, and Denmark where the four topics were discussed and further developed in the Training Course based on the feedback.
REWINS was a two-year project, funded by the European Commission under the Small Collaborative Partnerships grant focused on increasing participation of refugee women in football and
development of activities and material for coaches with working with refugees.
You can access the Training course here.
The event started with music, fun football and basketball games, along with a football freestyler show, and a workshop for mothers.
After a series of games with a DJ playing music in the background, a mini football tournament took place where all the participants were divided into small groups. There were special prizes for each team, which were handed out at the end of the tournament.
More than 60 women and girls from different age group participated at the event, receiving a jersey with a goodie bag, snacks and drinks on arrival.
The participants enjoyed the event, with many saying in their feedback that they would like these activities to happen more often.
Girl Power and European Week of Sport collaborated well together, and EWOS Denmark raised awareness about the event on their SoMe channels.
Organization Earth launched their team last September during the Goal for Global Goals Tournament at the European Week of Sports.
But despite a number of players joining the side at that point, a regular time and place for the training sessions couldn’t be found until January, when they sourced a pitch and recruited a female coach.
Away from the pitch, a trip was organised to go and watch the Greece national women’s team train and have a Q+A with the players and coach afterwards.
The next activity will see the Greece squad visit the Skaramangas refugee camp, where most of the Organization Earth players live.
Meanwhile in Italy, Polisportiva San Precario set up a team of ten refugee women last November, after generating a lot publicity to register for the side through flyers and online promotion. Training started on 22nd January, but the Covid-19 outbreak meant that only four of the five scheduled sessions could take place.
During this period, the players showed signs of great improvement and five more women joined the squad.
Over in Denmark, Girl Power Organisation partnered up with two refugee centres in Sjællsmark and Sandholm, and were also assisted by Danish Superliga side FC Nordsjaelland to recruit players for their team.
A number of volunteer coaches trained the side, and Girl Power were also able to run educational workshops, tours and sightseeing trips for the players.
The Research Study took place to sum up the results of the data collection and best practices collated from Greece, Denmark, Italy and other countries, on the subject of how to include refugee women in host communities through sport.
The EU project is called REWINS (REfugee Women INclusion through Sports) and the aim is to promote positive attitudes towards refugee women in sports. From January to December 2020 the Fare network is part of this EU project along with partners Organization Earth, Polisportiva San Precario and Girl Power. The focus of it is on the participation of women refugees in Football.
The main point is to reduce the challenges that limit refugee participation in sport activities and to act as a cornerstone for their integration within the local society. This project focuses in particular on female refugees that normally suffer from higher barriers while they try to participate in sports.
REWINS partners Polisportiva began by submitting questionnaires around organisations in Italy that are helping or coordinating with refugees. Their aim was to obtain an overview of the refugees’ possible interest in practicing sports. Polisportiva reported that many refugees held fears about their situation and what will happen to them, some could be displaced in other cities, some might lose support from the shelters. Their situation in Italy can be highly unstable.
Polisportiva also worked, and continue to work, on the development of materials for the Training Course that will be developed during the project.
At the REWINS’ second Transnational Meeting all partners met to create roundtables for discussing the main points and the structure for the Training Course. The project’s core themes and topics were discussed and data from the questionnaires was analysed, as well as the exchange of ideas and good practices.
Organisation Earth, another project partner from Greece, also carried out several actions regarding the implementation of REWINS. Being the lead organisation for the research study and collection of good practices, Organization Earth were able collect the data needed from refugee women, visiting the refugee camp in Skaramangas, Greece in order to do this. There, they were able to meet and discuss with refugee women.
Together with the data collection, Organization Earth also conducted a first recruitment of participants for the team which took part in activities at the event they organised on the occasion of the European Week of Sport. This took place in central Athens using football as a means of promoting inclusion, diversity and sustainable development goals.
To download and read the study please click the following link: https://farenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Rewins_ResearchStudy.pdf
The EU project is called REWINS (REfugee Women INclusion through Sports) and the aim is to promote positive attitudes towards refugee women in sports. In order to do this a research survey was created to collect more information from football coaches and refugee women in order to guide us in our work.
The REWINS consortium will work in the upcoming months on a Research Study that will address the barriers to participation of refugee women in local sport activities. The Research Study will compress the results of online questionnaires and other research, and the results will be published online.
These results will lay the foundations for the development of four football women’s teams (locals and refugees) and a Training Course for Coaches. The Research Study will be compiled and edited by project partners Organisation Earth.