The fourth meeting of our Strategic Partnership, funded by Erasmus + through Leargas, took place in the Feyenoord FC stadium in Rotterdam this week. The meeting involved an exchange of practice and discussions about our project which has seen hundreds of education professionals participate in anti-racism training. The project has also developed some new initiatives to help in our platform of anti-racism education.
Nicola Hay and Gillian Eunson from Show Racism the Red Card in Scotland told the meeting about their Young volunteers programme and their work on Refugee inclusion education. They told the meeting that a survey of young people they work with found that 37% of young people had experience of racism.
This shows the importance of education against racism. Their practice is underpinned by VAK principles of Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning, meaning that youne people in their workshops learn through seeing, listening and doing.
One activity they do is called New Neighbours. It invites young people to consider who they might regard as a desirable neighbour and consider the reasons for their choice.
New neighbours activity:
A muslim
Teenage girl
Somebody born in Scotland
A Catholic school pupil
A Rangers fan
Somebody with Pakistani heritage
The outcome of the activity is that they are shown a picture of a girl who is all of the above. It is important not to prejudge situations or people and to be open minded.
Presentation by SRTRC Netherlands partner – RADAR Netherlands
Their Mission is to fight all forms of discrimination.
They have distinct teams within their organisation. They are as follows: Complaints Office, Research, Prevention & training and Communications. They received over 700 complaints of discrimination last year. The organisation covers the south west region of the Netherlands and is one of a number of organisations who are funded arising from legislation, which obliges support for any citizen to report locally an issue of discrimination.
Activities with RADAR projects; SOFAR and Cando
SoFar is the internteam of RADAR. It stands for Serious Oppurtunities for Freedom and Respect. Interns develop their own projects next to the regular projects of the organisations. To give insight they themselves presented their projects. They also performed an interactive program with the participants present. It was an activity ‘Who am I’ where one had to guess characteristics of them without knowing them and so based on their appearances. This was later explained as ‘Don’t judge the book by it’s cover’ only. The objective here is to promote learning around prejudice.
Riku Alkio presentation about SEPPO
Seppo is an online platform which allows teachers develop learning games for young people. Riku presented the pilot game developed by the project in Finland since our last meeting. There are 14 tasks in the game and the pilot has been delivered with just over 100 pupils and the feedback has been very positive. There are plans to pilot the game elsewhere including in Ireland.
Presentation from the Feyenoord Fans Project
Michou de Maak is a teacher based in Rotterdam and is now working with the Feyenoord Fans project. She is employed through the community department at the club.
The club is a focus for Rotterdam. They run programmes which support participation of children in sport and education. The themes of their schools work covers different areas such as healthy eating, geography, history and also press conference which is about helping children develop communication skills.
At the Feyenoord ground, they run a project to support 500 children each year in their transition between primary and secondary schools. The project is an after-school project where children are given lessons on areas where they need to improve and also opportunity for football coaching sessions.
The club has partnership with different organisations including the Anne Frank Foundation to promote awareness of anti- Semitism and racism. The project works with supporters who have been subjected to stadium bans. The work around anti-semitism involves a visit to the district where German soldiers were not allowed during the war. It includes testimony from Jewish survivors of the occupation during the war. The course is designed in response to hissing choirs from supporters which targets Ajax Amsterdam, who are perceived to be a Jewish club.
https://www.feyenoord.nl/foundation
Geef Racisme De Rode Kaart
Hubert Rovers told how the project has emerged in the Netherlands while he was working at FC Breda. He noted that in recent years, the number of incidences at clubs has increased. Since founding the project in 2014, the project has visited 9 clubs and is cooperating with Radar, who are a non-government organisation with a focus on education. There are 3,200 club in the country and many more schools. The challenge for the project is to raise awareness and to develop education work with young people.
As part of their awareness work, they have printed posters with some of the professional clubs including FC Groningen, PSV Eindhoven, Hague, Feyenoord and others. In addition to the awareness campaign with club posters, clubs publicise the message and invite people to get their grassroots clubs to also do actions with the Red Cards. They also have club anti-racism templates for download and use by grassroots clubs.
The next steps for the project are to work with RADAR to start small in one area and grow from there with new resources. Hubert also works for EFDN (Europe for Football Development Network).
The final meeting of the partnership will review progress and plan next steps from Copenhagen in August 2017.
