On Thursday, 27th of August, at the Football House in Bucharest, the first meeting within the “Football For A Better Chance” project, financed by the European Commission and to be implemented by the Romanian Football Federation, took place in conditions of social distancing.
The 30-month project aims to promote social inclusion and combat the radicalization of young people aged 14 to 18. This will be achieved through football, the most popular sport in Romania, more precisely through the development of programs for different stages of training young athletes.
“Football For A Better Chance” will benefit from the expertise of sociologists from UNIMORE University in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy, who will lay the foundations of a specific training that, later, football coaches in Romania will implement together with their own players. In total, 18 international specialists and experts will collaborate in the project, including eight RFF representatives.
In the final stage of the project, the knowledge and techniques acquired as a result of the research and implementation of trainings in Romania, will be applied in four other European countries, Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Lithuania.
The next steps in the implementation of the project will be discussed in a video conference, with the participation of all partners, scheduled for early September.
Starting with August 2015, once with the foundation of the Social Responsibility Department, the RFF has run a continuous program of education and promotion of the values of social inclusion and prevention of radical behaviour. The RFF is the first sporting federation with such a department in Romania. Below you can find some of the projects carried out so far:
- 2015 – 2020 –The RFF Volunteer program, where 1.000 young people were educated in the spirit of the values of football, of diversity, inclusion and combating racism, discrimination, xenophobia and hate speech;
- 2015 – 2020 –Diversity Cup, a football tournament organized in collaboration with the Department for Interethnic Relations. In 2020 the tournament was suspended, because of the pandemic, but at previous editions around 14 adult teams and 10 children teams have taken part;
- 2015 – 2020 -; Partnership with the Foundation Policy Center for Roma and Minorities, to support the Alternative Education Clubs from Ferentari neighbourhood. The projects carried out with PCRM also include the football tournaments for children in Ferentari, the participation in the campaign ”Equal Game” of UEFA (2016, in order to promote the Roma children’s chances;
- 2016 –Adoption of the RFF Anti-discrimination strategy, having football as a means of promoting inclusion, of combating racism, xenophobia and hate speech;
- 2016 –Receiving the Active Watch prize for Responsible Discourse, at the Hate Speech Gala, for the Anti-discrimination Strategy;
- 2016 – Organizing courses for Referee Observers, in order to identify and report racist and xenophobic slippages, hate speech and to mention it in the observation sheet;
- 2015 – 2020 – Participation at the Football People campaign of FARE network, in order to combat racism, discrimination and hate speech; the 2020 ambassador of the campaign is Teo Meluță, member of the national women football team.
- 2017 – 2020 –Participation of the RFF in the FIFA program called “Football and Friendship”, in order to promote inclusion and diversity;
- 2018 – Participation of numerous RFF employees at the UEFA Seminar for the promotion of social inclusion
- 2019 –Start of the European funded project FIRE – Football including Refugees – which promotes the integrity of refugees in Romania. Following the collaboration with the Romanian Forum for Refugees and Migrants ARCA, financing was obtained from the European Commission for the project Football Integrating Refugees and Asylum Seekers, which will start in 2021.
