Mentoring Program
What's needed to start a women's or girls soccer team in Europe?
The Covid 19 pandemic has brought many things to a stagnancy worldwide. This has also affected a lot of sports clubs. After 1.5 years of pandemic break, some structures have to be rebuilt, especially in womxn’s and youth teams. Even before the pandemic, the numbers in womxn’s football (especially in the youth sector) were declining, also in Germany. This ends the trend of a few years in which football has grown through the girls sector.
With our project we wanted to actively increase the number of womxn and girls in football clubs across Europe. 10 mentees have applied with a project idea to create a girls’ or women’s team and are accompanied and supported by 10 mentors to set up a new team, an initiative, section or club for women or girls. The mentors and mentees are from different European countries (Serbia, Bosnia, Italy, Spain, Italy, Poland, Montenegro…).
Our project consisted in two main parts:
> Workshops, input & exchanges via Zoom (online) once – twice a month
> Network meeting in Berlin on May 5 to 8, 2022
During the six month topics like project management, leadership skills, safeguarding, funding and gender-based violence were discussed and intensified. Common sports and training sessions made the exchange of methods and skills really fruitful.
Most of the mentoring teams still work together and see each other, even if the project has already ended. Thanks to this project a lot of nice projects and teams have been established all over the European continent!
If you want to know more about the projects and teams, contact us 🙂
This project is funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community.
