Football for Inclusion (FINC) builds on football’s power and potential, as the most popular sport in the world, to appeal to young people also to those in disadvantaged positions, and on history, which when taught responsibly contributes to active citizenship and a sense of belonging. Together they can make a significant positive change in the lives of young people across Europe. FINC is a vital step in a long-term vision, which would place local history at the heart of every football club's social corporate responsibility strategy to help them reach out to communities and address modern-day challenges and opportunities such as diversity, migration, discrimination and equality. The project idea has evolved from experience of civil society organisations active in education, sports, outreach and research. Sharing a passion for history and football, they seek to utilise both in a concerted effort to promote social inclusion by pursuing five specific objectives: Promote diversity, non-discrimination and equality, including gender equality. Innovate formal and non-formal learning leading to social, civic and intercultural competences and critical thinking. Support the professional development of educators and youth workers and build the capacity to develop and implement innovative teaching methods. Engage cultural heritage for all by accessing the histories, memories and legacies residing in football history in transnational perspectives on all levels. Raise public awareness on the role of learning for social inclusion and increase the sharing of innovative practices across the continent. To achieve its objectives FINC will develop and deliver four main work streams. FINC will produce a thorough needs analysis to research how the methodology of appealing to young people’s passion for football in order to introduce new historical perspectives widens their social competencies and active interest modern day challenges of our society; pilot the application of learning in this methodology; produce practical and ready-to-use educational resources and activities for formal, non-formal and mixed educational contexts to make optimal use of this methodology; deliver widespread dissemination activities and ensure highest level of transferability to reach maximum impact through supportive policies, visibility and community-based on-going development of the approaches. The education resources FINC produces will contain 50 activities that support teachers in dealing with diversity in the classroom, with tackling rising intolerance and with engaging students in an innovative and meaningful manner through football in a history context. A complementary handbook will offer guidance and different approaches on how to utilise the resources in a non-formal learning environment. The consortium will work with two developer groups of 30 formal and non-formal educators from different countries, who will be selected on the basis of their motivation and ability to contribute to the development of high-quality educational resources for teaching social competencies, history, European values, heritage and active citizenship. The consortium will ensure wide geographic coverage, representation of various cultural and ethnic groups, as well as gender balance to maximise the quality of the outputs and their transferability. About 750 young people will be involved through piloting activities of the educational resources in formal and non-formal settings. The young people will represent local communities and come from all walks of life. An ambitious training and development programme with four international thematic staff trainings and nine multiplier events will contribute to the professional development of at least 50 educators, who together will reach over 750 young people during the project’s life cycle, and at least 500 every year after the project’s completion. After it’s completion FINC will have educated teachers, youth workers and trainers on how to sustainably engage target groups in formal and non-formal learning activities for better learning outcomes; successfully built capacity among teacher associations, NGO’s and sports organisations about the use of participatory approaches for education. The partner organisations will serve as knowledge hubs in their countries to provide other stakeholders with information on using football as a topic for education. FINC will have improved football clubs’ ability to engage difficult-to-reach young people and use cultural heritage to effectively address issues such as discrimination and intolerance. FINC long-term impact will be a contribution to EU policy for competence-based learning through the recommendation it makes and inform the future agenda on social inclusion and non-discrimination in education and sports at the European Union and an open door to local, national and international projects that combine the history of football with an agenda for learning to live together in Europe.
The Football History for Inclusion project was initiated to address the needs of those educators who witness, in their day-to-day, instances of exclusion and who wish to help their pupils engage in meaningful conversations about inclusion and develop social and civic competences. In particular, the project set out to enable these educators to use football history, which is widely beloved and known by the general public, as a door opener to grab pupils’ attention and make complex concepts easier to grasp. The project consortium was composed of: (1) EuroClio (NL), an International NGO which has 30 years of experience in project leadership and management, as well as a large network that includes relevant stakeholder and members of the target group of the project; (2) the Anne Frank House (NL), an internationally renowned foundation who has great experience in developing engaging educational materials that help countering antisemitism among youth; (3) Eintracht Frankfurt Museum (DE), a museum that uses local football memorabilia, tangible, and intangible heritage to develop workshops for schools to discuss concepts such as antisemitism, the holocaust, and diverse and multicultural societies; (4) Evenzo Consultancy (NL), a consultancy with relevant expertise in the field of communication and community engagement, which throughout the project held the role of curating and maintaining a high-quality and multi-tiered communication campaign; (5) Fare Network (UK), an organisation experienced in the generation and launch of initiatives aimed at the prevention of racism and racist behaviors in connection to football; (6) the Romanian Football Federation, which brought to the table their expertise in the development of successful campaigns to engage national minorities, promoting their inclusion. Additionally, a core team of 30 volunteer educators was formed to create 30 approaches for non-formal education settings and 30 exemplar learning activities. During the reporting period there have been 8 transnational partner meetings. The first meeting served as an introduction to the project, and helped partners develop a common vision on all Intellectual Outputs, including the roles and responsibilities and the time path, and a common understanding of the specific terms and language used in the project. The purpose of the second through fifth meetings was to prepare future joint sessions and to provide feedback to the draft materials developed by team members. The sixth and seventh partner meetings focused on adapting the project design to account for the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The eighth and final meeting was dedicated to evaluating the project, discussing in particular what lessons partners could learn for future improvement of their (joint) endeavours. There also have been 5 short term joint staff trainings: The Netherlands in February 2019; Romania in May 2019; Germany in November 2019; The Netherlands in February 2020; Online in September 2020. The last meeting was not originally envisioned in the project plan, but was added and held online to provide support to members prior to the beginning of the new scholastic year, especially in relation to the planning of online activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional one-on-one meetings between partners and team members were held throughout the project. Finally, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the project at the moment when national trainings were set to begin, several partners were able to organise dedicated “Football Makes History” trainings. Three of these were design to share project outputs and experiences with practising teachers and took place online in English, German, and Dutch in April-June 2020, while two took place in the fall of 2021 and were dedicated to discussing the role of football history as a tool to promote inclusion with football associations and policy makers. These took place in person, in The Netherlands and Romania. The project produced a variety of intellectual outputs: a Needs Assessment; a Toolkit consisting of 30 educational approaches to use football in non-formal education; 24 Lesson Plans, 6 Source Collections, and 1 teaching strategy design to use football in the (history) classroom; Policy Recommendations on the way forward; and an ambitious Public Awareness Campaign, including social media presence, the creation of engaging video content, and the launch of the website footballmakeshistory.eu.