Dialect 2 News
Football3 in Italy!
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.
