Integrate to play, Play to integrate
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Country: Argentina
Organization: Fundación Gente Nueva
Sport: Soccer
Year the initative began (yyyy) 2006
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence? Sports are among other working strategies within our integral social inclusion project that includes education, work and games.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field? Many children and young people we work with are suffering from a double social segregation: that one coming from society and that one coming from themselves, because they segregate themselves from the rest of the society. This gets children trapped in a vicious circle of segregation. We propose sports and arts to brake that circle. We try to work with children and teenagers who have not been so much influenced by the adults’ quarrels yet. In this way, we try to integrate them into the community and, in the end, they will not be so much discriminated against by the society.
What are the existing barriers, the biggest problem, your innovation is hoping to address/change? The main barrier is the society’s discrimination against ostracized groups of people, since within the same neighborhood there are several confronting groups.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing? Sports promoters in the neighborhoods are trained to create a tie between the local community and sporting activities. We also train coaches and instructors (that are preferably from that same community or from one with similar characteristics) to work in certain areas. We encourage children and teenagers to get involved in activities related to sports and arts and we also invite their families to support them and keep track of them, through educational establishments and programs. Once the activity has started, we look for local references, such as soccer minor leagues or the Aikido Federation so that the groups can take part in their activities. We continuously highlight moral values when working with sports or arts.
How do you plan to grow your innovation? Our city lacks closed spaces to develop sporting activities (due to the inclement weather conditions) which may become an oportunity for us. We plan to build a gymnasium in our working area, which will bring benefits to our project and it will also turn down some barriers – then, other people from the community will come closer to some neighborhoods.
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact. We aim at integrating children beyond their families’ quarrels and having a new outlook on our community.
What impact has your innovation had to date/or what is your intended impact? Exactly who are the beneficiaries? Up to date, we have been working with about 250 children and teenagers, who come from really poor families that live in segregated areas in Bariloche, Argentina. The main impact the program has had is to make children that come from conflicting families within the same neighborhood interact with each other. We have also made them participate in sporting activities in the community, though not so deeply, since we need to give them more time because they have just started to get involved in this way.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation? This innovation has, above all, taken children out of the streets and out of child labor. Many of those who take part in the activities are also part of our child labor eradication program, which focuses on sports and arts proposals.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact? The main barriers are the lack of closed spaces (gyms) to do sports and the low budget we have to employ competent staff.
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)? A donor and our child labor eradication program finance the project at present. We have a special program for high-risk youth, that includes a sports project. The program aims at organizing the community through local clubs.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization. Budged in USD: Coming from the organization: $ 1,600,000
Coming from the sports program: $ 8,000 Number of employees from the organization: 290 What is the potential demand for your innovation? We intend to extend the program to other neighborhoods where we work, reaching 8,000 children and teenagers.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability? Social inclusion programs take up a lot of labour force, which, in our case, has to be made of professionals. We need financing to employ promoters and trainers and, also, to build gyms.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. I come from a working-class family. My father is a truck driver and owner –entrepeneur- and my mother is a teacher. I belong to the middle class but I grew up next to poor areas and the people from those areas were my friends. My mother used to teach children from country areas and she would tell me about their unfair realities. My father dealt with important landowners and he also told me about how unfair things could turn out to be. Both my parents helped me see the different sides of reality.
I arrived in Bariloche when I was 22 to continue with my course of studies – engineering. There I met a group of young people who gathered together with a priest and talked about the reality and the things that could be done to change that reality. We listened to the priest’s pieces of advice and learned from his love to Jesuschrist. A little group was created. “New People”, we called it. Back in those days (1983-1985) we felt that everything was about to be done, and could be done. We created local organizations, radio stations, communal grocer’s shops, etc. In other words, I found the place I wanted to live in. Not because of its geography, but for its way of life. Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material. I believe that my profession has also helped me become stronger. I am a nuclear engineer and I have been severely educated. This taught me to face problems without fear and be self-confident. I am also very open-minded thanks to it and I can see things from different points of view, like the scientific one. All this has made me believe I could make my dreams come true.
Contact Information:
Gustavo Gennuso
Director Fundación Gente Nueva (Education) Discussions about this entry |
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