#Morethanfootball 2019 Education Focus Day
The 2019 #Morethanfootball Action Weeks is now in full swing and we are looking into our 3rd focus day of the, Education, Sustainable Development Goals. Today, it’s up to the Education goal !
Education in the 21st century is increasingly recognising the importance of social values and skills in addressing global challenges such as inactivity, obesity, unemployment, poverty and conflict and football can be a powerful lever in facing these challenges by engaging public, private and associative actors.
Football has the power to provide a universal framework for learning values such as equity, solidarity, equality, discipline, inclusion, perseverance and respect and therefore is an effective tool to be used in education, enabling integration, strengthening social cohesion and promotion of health. Ultimately, the programmes set up by the organisations help participants to develop personal and professional skills and put them into action in their communities.
Many professional football organisations are engaged in providing high-quality education programmes in the belief that sport, and football in particular, is a strong pillar for empowerment and engagement of young people. Through diverse education programmes, football clubs, leagues, associations and other stakeholders can create environments to achieve learning outcomes for the young people such as developing life skills, increasing participation in physical activity, creating volunteering opportunities, improving health and wellbeing and creating opportunities for social interactions. The programmes take advantage of/benefit from innovative learning centres and clubs iconic facilities to fully engage, motivate and inspire the participants.
An example of such a programme is the EFDN’s ‘Scoring for Health‘ which is co-funded by the UEFA Foundation for Children and running in partnership with 7 professional football clubs in 6 different countries, these clubs being Club Brugge (Belgium), Hapoel Tel Aviv (Israel), Feyenoord (Netherlands), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Brentford FC and Chelsea FC (both England). The programme, sees the clubs collaborating with local education and health institutions to promote and educate children on the benefits of eating a healthy diet and being active with a view to tackling the European wide phenomenon of child obesity.
There are numerous other examples of educational programmes being run by professional football clubs, from Chelsea and Feyenoord working closely together on programmes using football to promote and encourage kids to engage in learning Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics (STEM) skills; through to programmes by FC Emmen and 14 clubs in Scotland seeing clubs trying to improve literacy levels in target areas, and there are many many more examples.
Education is one of the key areas where football can be used to engage with children, and adults, who are traditionally difficult to reach.
