Football 4 Peace
Playing Football for Peace in the Middle-East at the University of Brighton
The aim of the project is to help to build bridges in divided towns, villages and neighbourhoods.
Beginning in 2001 with one camp for 60 children by 2003 the programme had expanded to three camps involving six towns and villages and more than 300 children, 18 UK leaders and coaches, as well as local volunteer coaches. The 2004 project has grown bigger still and will feature seven simultaneous projects, serving fourteen communities and facilitating 700 children. Today the programme in Israel involves 24 mixed communities with over 1,000 children.
Led by staff and student volunteers from Brighton and other partner institutions, F4P (Football for Peace), has until now featured the setting up and running of soccer coaching camps jointly for 10 to 14 year old boys and girls from Jewish and Arab communities. This project has increasingly involved cooperation between the University of Brighton and the British Council in Israel who is a key partner in terms of organisation and fund raising.
Sports coaches, community leaders and volunteers, work alongside each other bringing differing communities together through football and aspects of outdoor education. Each year the project will include staff and students from the school.
Football 4 Peace also now operates in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, facilitating a cross border project. Run by local teachers and coaches trained in the Football 4 Peace methodology, this project uses football to bring together children from both sides of the border regardless of background and religion. International development of the project occurred further in 2009 when Football 4 Peace began operating in Jordan.
In all projects, young people enjoy learning and playing football together in non-threatening settings. The activities and coaching devised by the initiative promotes interaction, allowing longer-term relationships and cross-community understanding to flourish.
Staff from the School, Dr Gary Stidder and Professor John Lambert, have created a specially designed football coaching package that not only emphasises skill development, but more importantly demands high levels of co-operation and interaction. John Lambert explained the idea behind this initiative:
'Used properly football can be a great device for bringing young people together. What we learned on the ground in Israel last year (2003) was that while the kids loved the football programme, young children of that age were less comfortable with some of the non-sport based, conflict resolution, activities that had been planned for them to run alongside the football. This year we resolved to rethink the football coaching and design it in such a way that a lot, if not all, of the community relations objectives could be achieved through the football itself.'
In an exciting development, in addition to the main project in Israel, at the end of March this year, more than 30 adult Jewish and Arab community and sport leaders from Galilee will be undertaking a training exercise in Eastbourne. While the stated purposes of this visit is to pilot the new coaching package and prepare for the July project in Israel, equally importantly it aims to stimulate interaction, awareness and mutual understanding between people of influence from an otherwise deeply divided society.
One of the project leaders, Professor John Sugden said:
'While we have little doubt that in the short term the children, not to mention our own students, get a great deal of satisfaction and positive experience from the F4P projects on the ground in Israel, we are also concerned to ensure that what we have achieved can have a longer lasting effect. One way of doing this is to foster better relations and friendships between those responsible for planning and operating sport and related youth and community projects in Israel year round. We hope that in addition to the actual coach-education, having our guests spend a period of time away from the constant reminders of conflict, rooming together and learning to get to grips with another culture will promote the kind of relationships that will endure once they return home.'
