Play This Game: Mixed Football for Children
Project promoted and encouraged participation in sport and physical activity among school-age children by implementing mixed football. We created for the first-time rules and criteria for the selection of children in mixed football applicable within football federations but also by sports teachers in primary schools.
The overall objective was to increase children’s participation in sports and physical activities as part of improving health by creating an appropriate framework in mixed football for children, both for clubs and football federations and for schools, as an integral part of sports classes. This Objective was achieved by creating selection criteria in mixed football teams for children, by promoting sport, physical activity and gender equality in a number of 18 schools from the 6 partner countries in the project, by forming 19 teams of mixed football, in which a number of 266 children were selected from a total of 1243. A number of 18 physical education and sports teachers collaborated with the coaches both during the selection period and during the preparation period of the mixed teams and the organization and holding the mixed football mini-competitions. The specific objectives of the project were achieved as follows: Sharing the best practices in sports among the members of the participating organizations and encouraging the participants in sports performance, through the development and dissemination of the 3 intellectual results. Each organization collaborated in its country with three schools, practically, by involving a teacher in each school, based on the elaborated selection criteria, we made selections of children for a mixed football team in the selected schools. During the selection activities, members of the partner organizations (teachers, coaches, managers) promoted health through sports through sessions with the children involved. Also, the selected teams benefited from preliminary training from the coaches of the partner organizations for the mini-football competition, which we supported as a concrete example of collaboration between sports organizations (clubs) and schools. The mini-competition itself was an example of promoting the health benefits of increasing children’s participation in sport as a result of collaboration between sports clubs (organisations) and schools.