More than a game - Football Including Refugees

Join us for our conference on Thursday 12 December in Bucharest, where we’ll be sharing knowledge, best practices and insights into how football can be utilised as a tool for social inclusion at a local level. You’ll maybe even get some new ideas that will inspire you to pursue your own local inclusion initiative for refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers!

The FIRE project strives to promote football as a medium of social inclusion, participation, socialisation and access to sport for asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants. Financed by the Erasmus + programme, FIRE’s main objective is to support grassroots football organisations and foster cross-sector partnerships between all involved sectors by creating a network for mutually enriching participants. We believe in fostering intercultural openness across European local football clubs and bodies, and further seek to empower, enable and support local football organisations to work with refugees and asylum-seekers through sport, and football.

Working Agenda

9.00 Registration and networking

9.30 Welcome

• Ciprian PARASCHIV Grassroots Manager, Romanian Football Federation

9.50 Introduction to the FIRE project

• Kiera WASON–MILNE FIRE Project Manager, Sport and Citizenship Think Tank

10.00 Social inclusion, sport and refugees – an overview

• Pr. Albrecht SONNTAG ESSCA School of Management (France)

10.30 Learning from good practices

• Jorge Bolaños President, & Dolores Galindo Communications, Dragones de Lavapiés (Spain)
• Fedasil (Belgium) TBC

11.00 Coffee Break

11.15 Q&A Panel Discussion

• Răzvan Samoilă Romanian Forum for Refugees and Migrants (ARCA)
• Kirsten Theuns Terre des Hommes Romania
• Thomas Farines Terre des Hommes Greece
• National Immigration Agency – speaker TBC
• Diana PIRCIU Project Manager, Romanian Football Federation

Moderator: Florin SARI Romanian Football Federation

12.15 Questions from the audience

12.30 Wrap up and conclusions

13.00 Lunch and Network

14.30 End of conference and departure of participants