How it started

“Football for all” is a community event taking place each month in the city of Thessaloniki with the aim to encourage integration between young people coming from different cultures and backgrounds through the ancient sport of football. The initiative was created in November 2017 by “We are Aniko” to promote football as a means for social inclusion and psychosocial support. Since 2019, the activity is carried on by the local organization “Refugee Trauma Initiative” and “Terre des Hommes Hellas” with the support of United Societies of Balkans (USB) and their volunteering team of Balkan Hotspot, which organised football matches every first weekend of the month (with a break due to current

Covid-19 measures of course). Through the years, and many football events the project teams developed step by step a specific working methodology to foster the most possible inclusion of every person due to her/his individual potential. Maintaining a friendly, positive atmosphere in which playing together weighs more than winning a game, is part of the outcome of the mentioned methodology. This is an example of good practice in order to evaluate and upscale its functionality on an international scale.