FOOTBALL & THE COMMUNITY IN A RACE FOR EQUALITY: The acceptance that we are part of a multicultural society compounded by different cultures is an existing global issue. The concept of the global dimension has proven difficult; existing community programs have failed to achieve proper ways in which social integration can grow and prosper. This project research intends to raise awareness and cultural understanding among local communities and explore some elements of social integration using sports as part of the delivery mechanism. In particular, football was selected because of its global popularity. It is a sport that has transcended all invisible barriers and has become a truly international sport - one that can be identified with by all. The widespread interest in the game is illustrated by the status of FIFA world cup, organised every four years. The world economy has adjusted to this world phenomenon and has developed economic strategies, especially within working hours, to allow people enjoy the game. Despite the world having made concessions to allow people to participate, the social integration factors have not yet been fully exploited. We hope this research will help us to build strategies and programmes to raise awareness in social and cultural inclusion. The project hopes to achieve the running of a “Mini World Cup” starting in Cambridgeshire , England and expanding to a regional level. Every region will have different local issues which only apply to those areas and local communities but we hope that some lessons can be learned as the aim of the project is a common goal. The intention is to help the communities themselves to run their own football and sports activities, also to develop programmes in which social inclusion and integration can be tackled. The project was inspired by an annual conference organised by the DEA, (Development Education Agency) in 2002. ( www.dea.org.uk/ ) Here, the need for finding a more sustainable approach to future development work and a need for developing programmes in which social and cultural integration issues could be analysed and tackled were discussed. The idea of the Mini World Cup was proposed and the research phase started soon after that. The research process focused on the following:
The initial parts of the research examining the effectiveness of existing programmes demonstrated a lack of cultural awareness and a lack of educational and pedagogical values behind the core objectives of those programmes. There was not enough research and study at local economic scale before solutions were applied. For example, a programme developed by the British Council entitled Global School Partnership in Ghana, ( http://www.britishcouncil.org/ghana-learning-school-linking.htm ), in which a teacher and a student from a school in the UK was sent to a School in Africa and a teacher and a student from the same school in Africa was sent to the school in the UK. Input from Ghana heavily criticised the main objectives of the project as they believe that economical and geographical aspects of the project were not fully explored and studied before sending the teachers and students. Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang made a study that focuses on urban-rural as well as interregional disparities in Ghana – “The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Structural Adjustment Programs and Uneven Development in Africa: The Case of Ghana: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/0033-0124.00239/abs/ ) The cost of sending personnel from the UK was expensive and matched the cost of hiring 10 fully qualified local Ghanian teachers for a year. In addition, the digital divide between the UK and Ghana was not considered, (Policy Reform, Economic Growth, and the Digital Divide: An Economic Analysis by Susmita Dasgupta, Somik Lall, David Wheeler – Development Research Group World Bank: http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/PapersLinks/1452.pdf . Schools in England may be fully equipped to the contrast of schools in Africa in which resources are almost non-existent. While students from Africa brought local musical instruments, textiles and printed material to the UK, media that was accessible to all, material taken to Africa from the UK was in digital format, for example DVD and CDs with pictures and videos. It was in some instances impossible for students and teachers in Africa to view the material. In some cases there was only one computer for the whole school with no DVD capabilities. Another important issue that was exposed during the programme was the management of the language barrier, this is well exposed on the paper: Beating the drum of international volunteering? Exploring motivations to volunteer amongst black and Asian communities. Paper Thirty-One by Anjul Sharma from the The Research Business International and Mathew Bell from VSO / Research 2002 – Conference papers: http://www.trbi.com/research2002/Anjul&Matthew.PDF). Simultaneous translation was require in order for the tutor to be able to communicate with the local people leading to increased operating costs. The important factor was the cultural heritage making relevance to the oral tradition and the community role in health education which is another area that existing programmes are not being able to address. In the paper: The role of school and community partnership in promoting heath and school education in Ghana by Samuel Adu-Mireku, the findings suggest that there is a need for creating better strategies in order to integrate school and community resources in order to meet the objectives of existing programmes aimed to enhanced school health education in the country ( http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?id=5092&jid=153&layout=html ). There were also problems with the assessment criteria and with the debriefing process. In many programmes there was no proper evaluation process and the assessment reports on the experiences were not considered against the geographical and socio economical factors of those communities in which the programme was run. We can take the same programme developed by the British Council: while the activities brought from the African teacher and student help pupils and teachers in the UK to learn about the cultural values of their society. (Education and Social Mobility in Ghana, G. E. Hurd, T. J. Johnson – Sociology of Education) The issues found in the Global School Partnership in Ghana programme developed by the British Council had shown that there are serious concerns regarding the planning and the educational learning objectives, to the point of reconsidering if this should be really be called a programme of study. We can conclude that the learning objectives were not met and that the real beneficiaries of the experience were the actual students and teachers from the UK and very little was left and learnt from the teachers and pupils in Africa. My own research has a more local focus. Initial Mini World Cup investigations revealed that there were more than 592 sports organisations in Cambridgeshire, including local authorities sports development programmes: • Every Day Sports And from the big organisations specialised in sports like football: • The Cambridge Football Association Most of the 592 organisations including the local authorities and the big specialised organisations had common goals but different agendas and management structures. This was a factor for the endemic so called “Reinvention of the Wheel”. This term describes the process in which not sustainable and educational values are part of existing development programmes which don't allow a rational use of resources and facilitation of share costs. It is hard to describe the real meaning of sustainability, but as described by John Huckle and Stephen Sterling in their book “Education for Sustainability” Book published in 1996 by James & James/Earthscan. They describe the term as follows:
Because no sustainable values were part of the process, many sports and cultural events were one off event, bringing the need for then restart or rethink the process again for future events or next year event leading to unnecessary cost and a loss of man time. Because there was no sustainable process behind the planning it was very difficult to build on what was done before. In other words, there were no foundations built to improve or make the projects or activities better. In many cases the activities were exactly the same. It was also evident that there was no proper debrief and assessment criteria in order to learn from previous lesson or experiences. The research phase also highlighted the lack of communication within different groups of the local community. For example the participation from the West Indian / Caribbean and black communities in Cambridge in events organised by the council is below 10 %, in contrast to the participation of the academic / white and more traditional English community at higher than 90 %. A traditional barrier to participation is a low income. In fact an economical survey has shown that these areas of the community do not have the disposable income to participate in city events with the family. Data gathered from result of the census carried out in 2001 National statistics – Nomis Official Labour Market Statistics ( http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/ ) in table T13 – Theme table on ethnicity – England & Wales. Statistic results were filter to obtain results for Cambridgeshire, Cambridge and Arbury Community. As an example, I myself with my family participated in the Pop in the Park at Parker Piece, event organised by the Cambridge City Council as part of their programme “Summer in the City 2006” on the 14 July 2006 We did not carry out a study with single people, employed or unemployed, but the photographs and video footage taken during the day have shown that the percentage of white people was 95 % and the percentage of ethnic community groups was 5 %. More extensive research is needed to look at the social economical factors in order to analyse the ethnic participation in sports and cultural events in Cambridge and how the case study shown above can be taken as an example in which integration can not be tackled as the social economics of the local communities are not consider during the development and deployment of cultural and sports events in Cambridge. A second case study was run in the Arbury Community, which is classified as an area of regeneration in Cambridgeshire and one of the regions with the highest levels of crime, drug abuse and alcoholism, (statistics from the Cambridgeshire Crime Research Centre 2004 to 2006, comparison of data Cambridgeshire, Cambridge and Arbury). However, Arbury is also one of the most ethnic diverse communities in the County. (2006 Nomis Official Labour Market Statistics Research run in Arbury has shown that 90 % of the community do not trust the local government organisations and they have the lowest levels of participation in Council run events. (Research carried out by Ricardo Arbelaez in 2005-2006. –Initiative was introduced to the heads of the Arbury Community on the 16 October 2006). It is therefore Arbury one of the most difficult areas in the County to launch a new initiative. We have learnt that we need to learn to listen to the community and provide ways of empowerment and gain trust. One of the statements that came across during the research phase was: “We don't like to work with the local authorities because they are very good at telling us what to do”. This is a very important statement and perhaps it will help us to analyse future development work in this area of Cambridge. (Cambridgeshire Crime Research Team - 2004 to 2006 Statistics, comparison of data Cambridgeshire, Cambridge and Arbury). Case studies from those programmes have highlighted the need for accurately determining the target group. The lack of a proper communication process impeded most of those programmes resulting in a failure to introduce a better social and cultural integration process. This summer I coordinated two successful 7-a-side tournaments in the heart of the city; one for boys and girls aged 9-10 years and one for women and men over 16. In both tournaments a wide range of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds were represented. The project was very popular and more events are planned for the future with the emphasis on cultural integration based on consultation with the local community. Please visit the Mini World Cup official site for more information, multimedia data and the outputs of the research:
|
|||
| Ricardo Arbeláez | Research pages |
||
| copyright © Ricardo Arbelaez 2006. All rights reserved. | |||
|
|
|||