Palazzo Valentini, Rome – Thursday, December 1^st 2022

On 1st December 2022, the final event of the SIMCAS project took place in Rome.

The international conference, organised by the US Acli, was held in Palazzo Valentini, a historic building that is the headquarters of the Metropolitan City of Rome, the territorial body of the Province of Rome, which patronised the event. 

The event was attended by representatives of the project partners involved in the initiative, those who contributed to its realisation or took part in the activities, and by national and territorial association leaders, Italian and European institutional and sports and social representatives.

 In addition to the representatives of the organisations involved in the SIMCAS project, speakers included: Barbari Funari,  Councillor for Social Policies and Health Roma Capitale, Roberto Tavani,  Delegate for Sport Regione Lazio, Saska Benedicic Tomat, ISCA Head of project, Stefano Gobbi,  Sport e salute Spa Head of Social Projects and Third Sector -Sport in the Territories Department, Siliva Squarciotta, Office of Development and Credit Orientation Banca Etica, Antonio Russo, Acli National Vice President

The speeches focused on what has emerged in the two years of work discussed, regarding:

• the primary role assumed in the European context by sport as an instrument of social intervention within a renewed vision of the welfare state and the state-citizen relationship
• the need for every integration intervention through sport to be part of an overall action that sees the strategic synergy of institutions and social and sports actors.

Activities have been implemented, by each project partner, to test and evaluate the methodological approach SIMCAS identified through: 

• a bibliographic research on the integration processes through sport and on the characteristics and difficulties of integration of foreigners in the chosen contexts;
• interviews to stakeholders; 
• an analysis of European existing good practices promoted by the project partners;
• a survey on the experience and training needs of coach.

The activities will be developed by the project partners over the next 6 months in different environments (prisons, suburbs, refugee camps, involving first and second generation immigrants), with people from different cultures (African, Asian, Eastern European), arriving in different host cities (large cities and small/medium cities, in northern, central and Southern Europe), offering different sports (soccer, martial arts, basketball, rugby, theater) with different approaches (single sport, team sport, social support, etc.). 

The objective of the activities will be to promote empowerment and social inclusion of refugees through sport, managing different tools and approaches to create a sense of community, against discrimination and reduce barriers.

The implementation process, conducted on such different environments, will produce feedbacks that will be shared among the project partners and will allow the research team to introduce improvements in the methodological approach and its tools, increasing the exchange of experiences between partners, the skills of the project operators, so that they can be successfully applied in other contexts.

October 2nd, 2020

The second transnational meeting of the SIMCAS project will take place on October 2nd. Due to the COVID 19 emergency, the partners’ coordinators will meet via Skype to discuss the progress of the project and plan future commitments.

In particular, the stakeholders’ interviews report will be presented and discussed. It is the second product of the ongoing research, aimed at defining a methodology to support sports operators in designing interventions for the immigrants’ integration in critical areas.

After the bibliographic analysis, Iref, and project partners interviewed academic experts, sports operators, third sector representatives and institutions keen on integration through sport for immigrants in critical areas. The results of the interviews have been summarized in a report that will be shared among the partners and then disseminated through international and national events promoted within Erasmusdays.

May 6th 2020

The first part of the research aimed at defining the methodological approach for the development of immigrants’ integration through sport has been presented and discussed during the project coordination meeting on May 6th. 

After the bibliographic analysis, the research work will include:

• stakeholders’ interviews;
• he observation of existing good practices at European level promoted by the project partners;
• the study of sustainability measures that can be applied to these interventions.

The bibliographic research, carried out by Iref with the contribution of Unicas, has allowed analysing the role of sport in the social inclusion of ethnic minorities. A work that has highlighted the potential of sport in the migrants’ integration process, identifying the successful and critical elements and stressing the unexplored ones. The former will be deepened and resumed through experts’ interviews and s good practices studies.

Berlin 21-22 february 2020

The kick off meeting of the project SIMCAS Social Inclusion Methodology in Critical Areas via Sport took place in Berlin on 21 and 22 February.  The meeting opened with the presentation of the partners and their activities. The first day of work was dedicated to sharing.

The main elements of the project (motivations, objectives, results, target groups, project design, main outputs), underlining the innovative and peculiar aspect namely to define and implement a methodology to integrate through sports activities immigrants living in critical contexts. 

In particular Tommaso Vitale (Professor of Sciences Po – Paris and SIMCAS ’research coordinator) intervenes via skype on “Relevance of the project in the EU context” focusing on the elements that characterize the project (inclusion, sport, critical areas, communities, etc.) and stimulating a reflection on their meaning also in relation to the objectives of the project. 

Saturday’s day opened with the presentation of a video with the testimony of those who participate to the social inclusion activities through football, promoted by CHOG, organisation hosting the meeting. The work continued with the definition of the operational plans and the first project coordination and management tools and the planning of the first project commitments.