EUROSCHOOLS project a success
Thursday 16 April 2009
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EUROSCHOOLS youth camp 2008 (©UEFA)
The recent eighth UEFA Grassroots Workshop covered a wide variety of topics over the course of three days in Hamburg, with Johannes Axster of streetfootballworld providing a presentation on the EUROSCHOOLS project that ran in the build-up to UEFA EURO 2008™ and throughout the final tournament.
'Education through football'
The sub-heading of Axster's presentation was "Education through football", a theme that ran throughout his talk. He began by providing some background on the concept of the EUROSCHOOLS – the official school programme of UEFA EURO 2008™, with most of the programme co-ordinated by the schools themselves – which were hosted in Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein but involved children from all across Europe. "The EUROSCHOOLS project was part of UEFA's social programme at UEFA EURO 2008™," Axster explained. "We wanted to use football and its motivational power to tackle certain topics."
Ambitious objectives
With more than 200 "embassies" and national training centres and more than 300 Fair Play tournaments forming crucial elements of the programme, the structure was in place to meet the objectives of the EUROSCHOOLS initiative. Those aims included allowing as many children as possible to participate, increasing international and intercultural awareness, supporting intercultural awareness, promoting Fair Play and respect on and off the pitch, tackling discrimination and allowing the children to play in mixed teams.
'One team'
Under the slogan "53 nations – one team" the EUROSCHOOLS programme ran a series of workshops and project days in schools, football practice sessions, open days, Fair Play tournaments and many more activities before UEFA EURO 2008™ kicked off, with youngsters from 47 countries travelling to the seven-day camps themselves. While at the Euroschools the participants were able to take part in intercultural seminars, Fair Play football training sessions, stage performances, workshops, international tournaments and excursions.
'Football can do'
"Though football can act as a very strong platform to bring people together, we needed further communal activities to bring them even closer together," Axster said. "These situations where they lived, worked and celebrated together proved to be at least as important as the football itself." The project proved an overwhelming success, with a film showing the children's activities and experiences at the EUROSCHOOLS, and the message reminding everyone of the purpose of the project: "Football is a means to an end. It is used for education and teaching, especially for adolescents who otherwise would not have been reached."
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