From May 20th to 24th, the 2nd European Street Football Festival will take place this year in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 24 delegations have been invited including several streetfootballworld network members.

Foča 09 will not just be about playing football as there is also an exciting programme of workshops and performances planned. In partnership with several organisations and experts, streetfootballworld network member Football Friends and streetfootballworld have set up an exciting programme for all participants.

Education 4 Peace – Master your Emotions
The theme of this workshop is “emotions-exchange-respect”. It will be held by the swiss organisation Education 4 Peace that aims to develop children’s emotional and social communication skills.

The four modules will provide the participants with a general idea about what emotions are, where they come from and what impact they can have on our behaviour. Using the example of football, the participants explore alternatives to potential violent reactions they experience in difficult situations.

Every workshop group will bring together young people from different countries to promote cross-cultural interaction, exchange and mutual respect for the others’ emotions.

Fair Play Football – no referees but dialogue
The Fair Play Football workshops, for young participants and young leaders, aim to give an introduction to the Fair Play Football methodology in order to prepare the participants for the tournament on the last three days of Foča 09.

Experienced workshop leaders from the berlin-based organisation Play!ya e.V. will elaborate each rule in detail, explaining the reason behind it and will let the participants implement the newly learned way of playing football in a practical setting. In a special session, young leaders get an instruction on how to mediate a Fair Play Football game as a ‘teamer’ to prepare them to take over the role of ‘teamer’ during the tournament.

Networking and capacity building for project leaders
Even though the young people are the main focus of the event, Foča 09 offers a wide range of activities for the delegation leaders and coaches as well. The international event offers them a chance to network, gain expertise from collegues and advice on capacity building. This helps them to, not only, broaden and strengthen the community of Development through Football organisations, but also to improve their existing programmes.

To help facilitate this, there will be a Networking Lunch on Wednesday, where all delegation leaders and coaches have the possibility to get to know each other and to present their organisation in an informal way. This will be followed by a general workshop about networking that provides the participants with strategies about how to successfully develop a network. Furthermore, streetfootballworld will offer a workshop about fundraising strategies in Europe.

Just like the young delegation members, the delegation leaders and coaches will also get introduced to Fair Play methodology, where the rules will be discussed and used in practise.

Streets United - Free Style Football, Beatbox and more
Other highlights of the event are to be arranged by Streets United. The organisation is specialised in street sports, arts and music and they will hold workshops on free style football, street dance, beatboxing and Dj-ing. streetfootballworld will keep you updated about the programme during and after the event.

Written by Julia Schilling