With the support of the ADA, fairplay at the VIDC has been offering workshops in the extracurricular youth work sector for years – on topics such as global learning, social inclusion and human rights. Young people have the opportunity to gain new experiences and reflect on their own position and values. The popularity of sport is used to promote awareness of human rights and development issues.
Since 2019, one focus of the workshops has been on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular gender equality (SDG 5). Sport is an excellent way of reaching a wide range of young people – and adults – and sensitizing them to the need for a global approach.
One of the aims of our educational programs is to connect sport with the real everyday lives of young people in a relaxed way as part of development policy and human rights education. Our offer is primarily aimed at young people between the ages of 10 and 19 in all federal states as well as young people with a migration background.
The concept of Global Learning states that educational measures must integrate the concrete, personal experiences and interests of young people as well as the emotional side. Only in this way is it possible for young people to participate and become interested in global issues.
Making the “Sport & Development” approach usable for development education work is still not a matter of course and is not well established. It is therefore important for the Our Game for Human Rights initiative to further expand the quality of concrete cooperation with Austrian sports associations, as well as with Austrian stakeholders in the field of sport/football and extracurricular youth work, and with partners outside the field of development policy.
“Our game for human rights” educational opportunities (2024)
Our educational offers aim to prepare well-founded knowledge for different target groups through dialog, to convey this knowledge accordingly and, above all, to make it available in the long term. The topics: Human rights with a focus on labor rights, women’s rights and children’s rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, freedom of expression, global learning and global justice, in the context of sport and major sporting events, but above all also beyond.
The focus of our educational work was clearly the year 2022 with the FIFA Men’s World Cup taking place in Qatar.
But we also have a number of activities planned for 2024:
- Workshops for children and young people (all year round): The fairplay workshops are aimed at children and young people aged 10 to 16 and can be offered throughout Austria in youth centers, outreach youth work, soccer clubs, sports initiatives, schools, etc. The focus of the “Our game for human rights” workshops is on global learning through sport with a focus on human rights and sustainable development.
- Seminars for multipliers (all year round) aims to disseminate the content even more widely and anchor the methods in the minds of educators, social workers, youth workers and sports coaches. The seminars are held by experienced workshop leaders in collaboration with the educational management of fairplay and are offered throughout Austria.
- “fairplay Academy” (April 2024): The fairplay Academy will be offered for the first time, and is intended to provide an opportunity to familiarize new people with the content and methods of the fairplay workshops over the long term. The fairplay Academy will address the target group of 16-21-year-olds, whom we have not yet been able to reach with our fairplay workshops or our workshop leader training. Participants in the fairplay academy will come from the fairplay workshops and also from the “fairplay on tour” pilot project. They can subsequently become part of the fairplay workshop leader pool, but should also be motivated to develop their own project ideas and become a voice for global equality, global learning and diversity through sport in their everyday lives (school, work, leisure).