Minor-Ndako Sport: indoor football team (futsal)

Specific action dedicated to newly-arrived migrants


PROJECT OWNER

Name of the project owner: Minor-Ndako
Status of the project owner:  National NGO
Area of work of the project owner: Sport / Migration / Youth / Social integration / Intercultural exchange / Health
Website of Minor-Ndako


PROJECT

 Belgium
Geographic scope of project: Regional
Project objective: Promote social diversity / Develop language skills / Educate and transmit values through sport / Practice a physical activity for physical/mental health
Types of sport or physical activity carried out: Football
Partners supporters: Legal (Flemish Community Commission in Brussels) / Other partner (Think Talent)
Project duration: Structural ongoing project (start: August 2015)
Project status: Completed
Supervising staff: Professionals / Volunteers
Summary of the project: Minor-Ndako offers adapted care and helps children, youngsters and their context in problematic situations. We focus on children from all over the world, in particular the most vulnerable among them. Most of our youngsters are non-accompanied minors. Participation and inclusion in society are the cornerstones of our approach. We assure qualitative aid and offer children and youngsters a warm nest that gives them energy and power to go on with their lives. With persistent engagement we aim at finding a durable solution for each of them. In 2014 and 2015 we founded Minor-Ndako Sports: a running club and an indoor football team (Futsal). With our oldest youngsters, young refugees of 16 years and older, we play since September 2015 weekly in the Brussels Futsal league (BZVC). We train every week on Wednesday evening. We hired a voluntary coach to lead training and matches. He is always accompanied by an assistant of Minor-Ndako. One of the reasons we started our football team is the fact that our youngsters have very difficult access to existing clubs and leagues. One of our aims is inclusion: our youngsters can't be excluded from social structures and have the right to participate in official clubs and leagues, and play against other Belgian teams. Furthermore Minor-Ndako believes in the power of sport and football for her youngsters: individually (the mental and physical advantages of sport), and socially (the universal language of sport: sport is a very beautiful and powerful tool to unite and bind people). This is realized in several ways: playing in an official league against other Belgian teams, organizing an outdoor Football cup in summer with 12 teams, becoming a partner club of another Flemish futsal team (playing friendly matches against each other and in the future train together).
In addition we implicitely want to focus with our football team on individual and group competences such as: to function in a team, be able to give feedback and to coop with negative comments, self-control, deal with wining and losing, fairplay,  have respect for opponents and referee, etc. In the future we want more and more to become a club from and through our youngsters, give them more ownership: they will take up roles as second trainer of the team, delegate of the team, etc.


TARGET GROUP

Country of origin: Our youngster are non-accompanied minors from: Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea; Morocco, Albania

Types of migration: Refugee / Asylum seeker / Economic migrant
Target beneficiary: Children / Teenager-Young people
Target age group: 11-20

Contact form to project owner
Projects