The contribution of sport within the process - International Platform ...

participant concerning the benefits perceived by them during and after activities.
The most common sport is football followed by volleyball and running, and the
respondents, before coming to CFS were on average involved in sport activities few
times a week in football, less often in volleyball and running, and some of them were
approaching for the first time sport. The main reason why they were not doing sport
more often is domestic work for both, males and females, where domestic work
represents harvesting for boys and housekeeping and looking after brothers and
sisters for girls. Sport was also not perceived as important from parents that at the
beginning were a bit reluctant to send their children at the centre. After a while, as
highlight in the FGD they modified their thought seeing a positive changing of
behaviour in their children.
As indicated in the Free time graph (where the percentage represent the result of
a multiple choice question) most of them work in their compound and at the same time
look for a job for income. For sure poverty remains the main problem and sport can
only be a piece of the puzzle bringing benefits as sense of responsibility and respect,
sense of commitment and achievement, sense of self confidence, all of them
necessary to build a better future.
A great result is given by key questions like “I fell more positive about my future” and
“I’m more integrated with other communities” where 100% answered in a positive way.
Borsani Serena – Master in Human Rights and Conflict Management 2008
Dissertation
Figure 12 - Graph “What do you do in
your free time”
Youth are more confident about
themselves and more tolerant with
others, with signs of hope for future,
where hope or the belief that hope is
there, is a chance for success in reconciliation. In this case sport has been contributing
to speed up trauma healing, through building and enhancing that inner strength called
resilience.
Making new friend, staying with others, having fun, improving skills, being member of a
team are building confidence are among the main reasons why they like sport.
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Figure 13 - Graph "How do you feel since you started taking part in sport activities?"
Figure 14 - Graph "I feel more positive about my future"
Borsani Serena – Master in Human Rights and Conflict Management 2008
Dissertation
Sport activities were often followed by
discussion groups or psychosocial individual
or group sessions in which youth could freely
talk about their feeling about past, present
and future. The individual sessions have
been targeting to youth not yet ready for an
open discussion with other ethnicity, in order
to reduce their anger and bitterness as well as to build the necessary empathy to
have the willingness to listen to the others.
The group discussions which aim is to create the opportunity for an inter-ethnic
dialogue have been gathering already mixed participants.
Figure 15 - Graph "At times I think I'm not good at all"
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