The Welcome Sports Club works to ensure the social inclusion of refugees

Social Innovation Sports is a Portuguese NGO, created in 2020, focused on the use of sports as a tool for social integration/inclusion. One of the several projects that we are running is Welcome Sports Club — a project where we use sports to guarantee the social inclusion of refugees, mostly young unaccompanied minors, coming from refugee camps in Greece.

In our vision, an important milestone in social inclusion is the access to a fair and decent job. Our approach with those youngsters is to use the sport as a tool to know them better, to help them build their life project and provide them access to the labor market (short, medium, or long-term depending on each one’s profile).

Portugal is well known for being a hospitable nation that welcomes all foreigners regardless of their race, color, national origin, gender, or any other criterion. Our testimony is based on our field experience while working with local stakeholders, and more than 100 refugees and 700 youth migrants (1st, 2nd or 3rd generation).

We split the process of integration into three main stages, with slight differences when we are considering adult/family refugees and non-accompanied refugees:

• Arriving/On boarding process, the first three to six months after arriving in the country
• Integration process, from six to eighteen/twenty-four months
• Independency process, after eighteen/ twenty-four months

In the arriving process, when something is new, all of the public, sports entities, government, federations and clubs become proactive to support the newcomers. We’ve seen that with the support extended towards the first Afghans coming from the Greek refugee camps, in September 2021 when the Taliban regained control in Afghanistan and during the emergency process, and recently during the Ukrainian crisis. The first ones arriving received sports equipment from the national team and the largest football clubs in Portugal, had access to attend football matches, and most recently the government and some federations announced facilitating measures on the registration process of refugees in official competitions.

During the integration process, we realized that the hosting  entities in the sports ecosystem, like Social Innovation Sports and Fundação Benfica, who are facilitating the access to sports, are the ones focused on those communities. This does not mean that the sports federations and clubs are not supportive, but their initiative is less common. During this process, we also realized there are open doors to finance projects using sports for social inclusion from public, private and sports entities.

Finally, in the independence process, we found that refugees are mostly treated like the locals - if they have high sports qualifications and/or financial capacity to pay to practice sports, then they are welcome; otherwise it’s difficult to access organized and structured sports activities in clubs and fitness gyms. Also, during that process there is some access to funding opportunities.

What can and should be done from the different parts of sport ecosystem to change the current situation

Considering the relevance of sports to prevent mental and physical health, and the important role to guarantee the social inclusion in the host communities we do believe that it’s important to guarantee:

From key national stakeholders (European Union, National Ministries, and National Federations):

• Free access to sports activities, including a monetary value as a voucher for sport access
• Free, and without an international permit, access to Federations and Associations registers, counting as local citizens        
• Reward clubs and associations facilitating the access to sports for those communities or doing work that differentiate those entities
• Developing documentation and training related to best practices while working with refugees
• Communicating and reinforcing the importance of sports for refugees

From key local entities (clubs, sports for development entities, humanitarian actors):

• Guarantee training and education of managers, technicians, and coaches on the relevance of sports for the quality of life and social inclusion of refugees, and how this can improve the social role of their entities
• Removal of barriers to the practice of sports: material, financial, transportation, language, etc.
• Proactivity to understand where the needs and the opportunities are, matching the aim of the refugees with sports offer, creating locally, if required, an appropriate offer connected to their culture, an example can be the creation of a cricket club

Our experience in Portugal

Our experience in Portugal highlights an individual sensibility from some of the key leaders, sometimes followed by their organizations, but lacking medium to long term projects that guarantee easy access to the sports activity.

Good examples are: IPDJ with PNDpT (National Plan of Sports for ALL) supporting and financing projects, Federação Portuguesa de Futebol (Portuguese Football Association) facilitating register processes, Portugal National Olympic Committee supporting refugee athletes, Benfica Foundation guaranteeing regular activities and daily support, High Commissioner for Migrants (ACM) financing projects, Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund financing projects, and several municipalities and private entities supporting upon specific demands.

The context, and the lack of defined and clear policies supporting the important role of sport on social inclusion, social cohesion, and psychosocial support, demands a complete proactivity from the ones that are daily supporting the refugees.

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Ricardo Carvalho is a graduate in PE and Sports from FMH - University of Lisbon. He is an entrepreneur in the areas of Technology and Sports (Infordesporto and TIMWE) with multinational and multicultural experiences. In 2020, he founded Social Innovation Sports – an NGO focused on supporting projects that use sport as a tool for inclusion and social elevation. He is also a sports-tech investor, and serves as a mentor and president of FMH Alumni.