Spirit of Football e.V.

Day 5: A fitting finish to a most remarkable year.

“Do the things that you did not expect to ever do. You can be someone who gives hope to others.”

It began with our Bedouin driver Omar, who had taken us to visit his family and their camels the previous evening, proudly pointing out the FairPlay street art that had miraculously appeared on a town wall overnight. According to Omar, it was the talk of Azraq town and made the people very happy.

Once inside the camp, Spirit of Football’s artists Sven and Sebastian were joined by local artists Sameer and Mohammed and with additional helping hands they proceeded to finish off the mural that we had all begun on day one. It had been communally prepared in three groups whose task was to take the SoF Fair Play rules and to illustrate them. Some of their ideas were sketched directly onto the wall, others were enacted, photographed and then projected onto cardboard and became life size stencils that were spray-painted onto the wall. Smaller stencils were also crafted and used for the background. The mural will be a permanent reminder of Spirit of Football’s work in the camp in 2018.

Unser Fahrer Omar.

Die Graffitiwand nachgestellt mit Nicola und Abed

Ulrike and Qais continued their interviews of participants who had been with Spirit of Football since the beginning of 2018. The aim of these interviews was to record personal impressions of the participants’ time with SoF. We were sure that our work in the camp had been bearing fruit but these open and frank interviews gave us a new and deeply honest view of the ways in which our work has touched their personal lives. It is fair to say that every one of them, in vastly different ways, has seen positive change in their outlook. This has been especially the case with the women of Azraq. They have gone from being shy and introverted and always being in the background to embracing the power to change their own lives, their families’ lives and to be change-makers in their own communities. You can read more about these wonderful people in another blog post here.

Das Team von Spirit of Football mit unserem Übersetzer Qais und zwei Mitarbeitern von Care International.

Time to say Goodbye

Nicola and Andrew conducted a vision workshop – asking the participants to present their ideas for the continuation of the project in 2019. We have a dream for Azraq that we have been working hard on realizing. We hope that the project can continue in 2019 with our participants helping us to take the SoF philosophy deeper into the camp. We came with good news this week: The German Foreign Office has signaled that the project may well be funded in 2019 and CARE Norway would like to help SoF set-up infrastructure in the camp. One group of participants especially impressed us with their vision: They drew concentric circles symbolizing how the SoF values should start in the individual, spread out into the family, the neighbourhood and their work and the camp before radiating out into society. They are committed to bringing this vision to fruition. We are doing our best to make it possible for 2019.

Benni prepared a diashow of photos and videos from 2018 for the final session which took place in village two at the newly opended CARE plenum. The participants also watched emotional and inspirational video messages from other SoF and GIZ teamers who could not be in Azraq this time. The week and the year in Azraq ended with the ceremonial handing over of Certificates to the participants and the signing of the “Ball of Peace” and a wonderfully emotional send off: Nihal sang a traditional Syrian song and was joined by Lame on Percussion and the rhythmic clapping of all others.

It was a beautiful and inspirational day: A day filled with hope in a place that usually feels quite bleak to us, who are fortunate enough to come and go at will. One again we were so impressed by the humility of these people. And we left feeling that our project has made a real difference in their lives and convionced that it will continue. One Ball, One World

Die Projektreihe ‚Training of Trainers‘ iN JORDANIEN wird gefördert von

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