LFC supports UN project
The second United Nations UNOSDP Youth Leadership Camp got underway in Germany this week, with Liverpool FC offering their support to the project.
25 youngsters from underprivileged communities in 10 African countries and the Palestinian Territories started the 11-day training course in Hennef.
The scheme focuses on empowering participants to deliver sport-based social programmes and invoke greater change in their communities, and earlier this week they visited the stadium of Bayer Leverkusen for a three-hour coaching clinic.
Liverpool FC works directly with the United Nations and in April, United Nations Special Advisor Wilfried Lemke joined two youth leaders at the Anfield-based Reduc@te, where the group learned about the work the club carries out in local communities and beyond.
A trip to Qatar in January this year laid the foundations for a strong partnership between the club and the UN, which is primarily aimed at helping children from war-torn and impoverished countries.
Initiator of the project, Dr Lemke, said: "All of the participants who work in Sport for Development and Peace projects and have already made significant contributions in their communities.
"But the extra expertise and experience that they gain from this camp gives them the chance to grow as role models and as change makers in their communities."
23-year-old participant Shama Buba said: "The UNOSDP Youth Leadership Camp has so far beaten all the initial expectations I had."
Originally from Nigeria, Shama has been working this past year in Namibia for the organization Special Olympics, coordinating sports and physical activities for persons with intellectual disabilities.
She added: "It has given me the opportunity to realize even more acutely and concretely how lives can be changed through sport, how victims of poverty and discrimination, or persons living with a physical or mental disability can be included and empowered through sport."
Before heading to the BayArena in Leverkusen, the participants had the chance to visit the German Sport University Cologne for a lecture on the key aspects of monitoring and evaluating sports projects on the ground, followed by an exchange of experiences with staff and students.
The camp consists of 11 days of experiential learning, for which a unique curriculum was specifically developed, addressing themes such as health, gender, disability, education and peace.
Through seminars, play-based activities, group discussions and an adapted practice of football, judo, boxing, basketball, yoga and other disciplines, the participants learn to maximise the transformative power of sport and play in order to invoke social change.
The initiative is led by the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP), in close collaboration with the international NGO Right To Play.
This edition is hosted by the Hennef Sports School and has been financially supported amongst others by the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia as well as by the Jacobs Foundation.
It brings together an extensive network of partners, including the International Paralympic Committee, the International Judo, Basketball and Table Tennis Federations, Bayer 04 Leverkusen and their partner Scort Foundation, the German development agency GIZ and the NGO Boxgirls International.
It is the intention that up to four similar camps take place every year.
Click here to read more about the UN's visit to Anfield earlier this year>>