Dialect 2 News

On the 21st of May, DIALECT2 football team in Athens celebrated the completion of the piloting phase with a one-day event. Τhe celebration included multiple activities in different spots in Kolonos neighborhood.



Adolescents had the opportunity to come close to other kids and youngsters from the local community and share their love for football.  The event offered to people of all ages the chance to have fun, to join participatory activities and to enjoy a day that fostered community building.

 

Dialect 2 News

On April 6, 2024, the bustling City Park in Budapest, a beloved destination for weekend revelers, transformed into a vibrant stage for an innovative outdoor exhibition curated by OSA. Coinciding with OSA’s established Saturday training routines, the event capitalized on the park’s weekend foot traffic to attract a diverse crowd. Participants from the training sessions, along with their families and caregivers, mingled with a substantial influx of curious onlookers. From dawn to dusk, the atmosphere buzzed with excitement and a strong sense of community.

The day’s agenda was rich and varied, featuring an engaging mix of video presentations that highlighted inspiring stories and achievements, alongside exhilarating live football matches that captivated the audience. These activities created a lively and interactive environment, serving both to entertain and educate those in attendance. The compelling content on display ignited the interest of many visitors, fostering meaningful conversations with OSA coordinators, social workers, and enthusiastic participants of the training sessions. This direct interaction significantly boosted public engagement with OSA’s mission and ongoing projects.

Despite the dynamic and energetic setting, the outdoor ambiance presented some challenges in fully conveying the intricacies of the video presentations. The bustling background noise and intermittent distractions somewhat diluted the impact of the digital stories. Recognizing these hurdles, OSA is now planning to organize an indoor screening event. This forthcoming event aims to present their digital content creation projects in a more controlled environment, conducive to attentive viewing and deeper appreciation, allowing attendees to fully absorb the nuanced details of the narratives.

Dialect 2 News

About fifteen boys and girls playing football in the street with a white t-shirt. For football goals a gate on one side, and two trees on the other. Every now and then someone leaves the game, picks up their mobile phone or tablet and joins those who are walking around the square asking passers-by questions. 

“Do you think women are discriminated against in football?” “Do you think it is possible today in our city to play football without paying?”. “Does a foreign boy or girl have the same chance of playing in a team as an Italian?”. 

This was, more or less, the exhibition event of Dialect2 of the 6th of April, a moment when the boys and girls taking part to the project showed the inhabitants of the Bagnoli neighbourhood the results of the work done during the Football3 tournament and during the media literacy workshop. From Luigi, the youngest of the footballers, to Fatima and Hafiza, the two most assiduous mediators, everyone made their contribution, showing videos, making questions, talking and reflecting with the people on the issue of discrimination in sport and on how digital technologies can be transformed from a tool that too often spreads hatred and racism into a tool for reflection and inclusion. 

Young people, couples, adults and the elderly spent some of their time with the youngsters in the project, happy to see them get involved and take responsibility, for once, to teach the older people something. 

“This work is very important for these children – explains Daniela, a neighbourhood teacher – to whom the school almost never manages to give adequate answers. Over the years, many have found answers to their difficulties in activities organised by associations and other organizations; and in various ways such as painting, hip hop, football. I followed some of the activities of this project, and it was nice when I met my pupils! They were so proud to explain something to me, and to talk to me about how football should unite, make people get together. One of them told me that we have to speak more, because ‘mobile phones sometimes turn us against each other‘”.

The next event in Naples will be the final tournament of Football3, in which the boys and girls from Bagnoli will meet teams from the other neighbourhoods with whom they have already competed over the past two years, and other new teams or young people who are approaching the project. 

 

Dialect 2 News

Football Friends organized another amazing event to celebrate the successful completion of the pilot phase of Project Dialect 2. As a big finale, we hosted a memorable day filled with inspiring messages and football3. Our partner, Primary School Dragojlo Dudic, kindly hosted the event on Friday, April 5th, titled “Let’s Win Together.”
During this special day, students, teachers, and big number of guests had the chance to see the creative works made by students who took part in workshops. It was a display of talent and innovation that impressed everyone.

But the event wasn’t just about digital literacy. There was also an exciting football3 tournament, where teams showed fair play and teamwork while cheering for each other. It showed how working together and having fun can lead to success.
The “Let’s Win Together” event brought everyone together to celebrate teamwork, creativity, and inclusivity. It proved that when we collaborate, we can overcome challenges and achieve great things. Congratulations to all involved for making it a truly special day!

Dialect 2 News

On Saturday, April 6th the football team of #ActionAid’s Community Center in Athens presented its digital content projects at the Plato Academy. Through the projects they created, the adolescents talked about the topics of the #DIALECT2 program, racism, and xenophobia, while spreading the messages of acceptance and respect. The projects were also presented by partner countries Italy, Serbia, and Hungary, which are concurrently implementing the project. The event closed with many happy faces, food, and of course, football!

Stay tuned for the program’s next activities! 

Dialect 2 News

Six beautiful months are behind us, six months full of football and fun.

But that was not typical football we played; that was football3 in action—a game where fun, fairness, and friendship take center stage. As the matches kicked off, players from different backgrounds came together, united by their love for the beautiful game and a shared commitment to fair play.


Players have engaged in dialogue, resolving disputes with words instead of fouls, and celebrating each other’s successes with genuine joy. In football3, every match is an opportunity to learn, grow, and build meaningful connections. It’s about more than just winning or losing; it’s about the journey—the shared experiences, the friendships forged, and the memories that last a lifetime.

For the last six months, we played with passion, played with purpose, and most importantly, we played with a smile on our faces. Because in football3, the true victory lies in the joy of playing together and having fun.

Dialect 2 News

If you were to ask us what children are better at or what they enjoy more, the answer we would give you before the start of the project is definitely football.

But what we learned in the previous period and disproved the initial thought is that there is no significant difference between football and digital literacy workshops.

We concluded that children enjoy both phases of the project equally. From the experience we gained in the previous period, it is clear that children have a desire to acquire new knowledge and skills, especially in the field of digital literacy and expression through video content. 

What is particularly important to us and what we are proud of is the development of teamwork skills, emotional intelligence (to learn about their emotions and how to express them as adequately as possible), inclusiveness, responsibility, and critical thinking, both on the pitch and at workshops in the classroom.

At the workshops, we also learned how to create digital content such as videos, blogs, posts, using digital platforms (e.g., online chats). The children learned to use the Internet as a source of information in a positive way, to distinguish fake from real news, and how to verify it. 

Through all these activities, the children acquired not only basic digital literacy skills related to the project, but also in a wider professional and social context.

The combination of football and workshops provides a comprehensive experience that supports the overall development of children by preparing them for the opportunities and challenges that await them in the future.  

Dialect 2 News

For several years now, Dialect has involved hundreds of adolescents of the Neapolitan metropolitan area in training processes and the application of capacity building to the world of sport. The first edition of the project worked to identify, and then combat through Football3, the forms of discrimination, exclusion, and violence present or potentially present in the world of football. In this second edition (Dialect2) what we are trying to do is to connect these issues, and the possible inclusive solutions we have identified, with another theme that fuels practices of discrimination and exclusion in the world of youth: the use of social media and new technologies.

“Violence” is not a word that should go together with others such as “sport” and “technology”, but in a historical phase in which young people find it difficult to embark on pathways alongside adults who can follow and guide them, this is happening more and more often. Over the past six months as ActionAid staff in Naples we accompanied a group of young community mediators (who had been players in the first edition of Dialect) to Oslo, to conclude a training course they had already started online and which had lasted several months. Once back here in Naples, we worked to share the tools that the boys and girls had learned with the even younger inhabitants of the Bagnoli neighbourhood, and we reunited the Dialect and Dialect2 paths through the moment that most pleases and gives joy to all: the Football3 tournaments.

Dialect2 will still be running, and we have a lot of work to do. We can’t wait to start using the ball and the smartphone (and other technological tools we are working on) together, to show once again that football is everyone’s and for everyone, and that we must work to ensure that everything, even the most beautiful and socialising things like sport and technology, are not if misused and in the wrong hands. See you soon on the fields and on these screens.

ActionAid Italy staff working on the Dialect2 project

Dialect 2 News

One of the most beautiful experiences that DIALECT2 gave us was our trip to Oslo. From June 28th to June 30th, 2023, all the partner countries participating in the project sent a delegation to Oslo, Norway, consisting of 6-7 participants to receive face-to-face training in digital and media literacy skills. Following the online course, the in-person education came to reinforce and present, on a practical level, the knowledge gained during the online course. The main topics of the education were the role of digital media in society, their impact on young people, and the enhancement of their skills. In addition to in-person training, the teenagers had the opportunity to explore Oslo, take walks, admire the Norwegian fjords, and see a European city. For many of them, it was their first time traveling abroad.
In the video, you can see our most beautiful moments condensed into one and a half minutes!

Dialect 2 News

DIALECT2 “Combating youth raDIcalizAtion: Building communities of toLEranCe combining fooTball with media and digital literacy” sets its base on the DIALECT project “Remembering Polarization: Building Communities of Tolerance Through Football” (co-funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020)), which was realized the previous years.

DIALECT 2 goes further, having a twofold aim, combining the power of sports and football in specific, with media literacy. With the proliferation of mass media and social media information nowadays, a pursue to raise the critical thinking and self-determination of adolescents, whose identity construction is overlapping between offline and online interactions, seems more needed than ever.

A large number of mediators and trainers from all partner organizations participated in the online trainings, which were held according to the program and plan designed by Norsensus. All of them will finalize their training with training sessions that will be held in Oslo at the end of June 2023. In the continuation of the project, they will transfer the acquired knowledge not only to the young participants of the football3 tournament, but also much more widely.

On the occasion of the trip of mediators and coaches from Football Friends, a meeting was held where experiences and impressions from previous training sessions were shared, as well as concrete schedules, travel agendas and stay plans were agreed upon.

DIALECT 2 is funded by the Erasmus+ Sports programme of the European Union. It is being implemented in Greece by ActionAid, the National Center of Social Research (EKKE) and the Panhellenic Association of Paid Female Football Players (PSAP), in Italy by ActionAid, in Hungary by Oltalom Sportegyesulet, in Serbia by Football Friends, in Germany by Streetfootballworld and in Norway by Norsensus Mediaforum.