The project will be coordinated by Sport and Citizenship and will rely on an intensive collaboration between every actor involved in order to achieve the ambitions as set out in the application. Each partner was represented during the meeting: the FARE Network, the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA), the Fundacja dla Wolności, the Scottish Football Association (SFA), the Fundación del Fútbol Profesional (FFP), and the ESSCA School of Management. All partners have used these two days to express their views, and they have shown a great determination to carry out the project.
Having been selected following the 2018 Erasmus + call for proposals conducted by the European Commission, the FIRE project aims to be an effective response to the ambitions of the sport’s chapter included in the Erasmus+ 2014-2020 Programme, particularly when it comes to using sport as a tool for social inclusion. Sport and Citizenship and its partners are firmly convinced that sport has a key role to play in order to address the migration challenges that Europe is currently facing.
The main objective of the project is to support grassroots football organization and foster cross-sector partnerships between every sector involved by creating a network for mutual enrichment of participants. One of the major initiatives will be the implementation of Local Activation Pilots to adapt international good practices to local context to meet the needs and expectations of migrants in different countries with divers backgrounds. The kick-off meeting was particularly fruitful by providing a framework for the Mapping of the existing initiatives around Europe, the Mapping being one of the first steps of the project (January-August 2019).
