Participation in sport makes it possible to promote physical health, gain positive experiences in a new context, experience a distraction from everyday worries and create a meaningful leisure activity, especially for children and young people.

In the long term, soccer can contribute to social encounters between people with and without a history of flight, support the integration of refugees and thus promote a stabilizing environment.

The FUSSBALL GRENZENLOS project runs various measures to enable participation in soccer:

• Advice & mediation:
  The project staff act as contact persons for refugees, volunteers who support refugees, club representatives and anyone who is interested in the topic or would like to find out more about it. The advisory service can, for example, arrange trial training sessions in clubs, advise on training opportunities and provide information on material donations.

• Material donations for refugee shelters:
  Mobile soccer sets (mini goals, balls, hats, bibs) are used to support refugee shelters with high material requirements. This enables uncomplicated soccer matches to be played directly in refugee accommodation - even in limited spaces and without a large infrastructure.

• On-site soccer clubs:
  Trained coaches offer regular soccer sessions for children and young people of different age groups from refugee shelters. These clubs take place either directly in the accommodation centers or on nearby sports fields and are free of charge for the participants. The focus is always on the fun of soccer and exercise and the participants can not only discover soccer for themselves, but also develop in a variety of ways.
  
  Open training in Neukölln
  In cooperation with FC Berlin Neukölln(https://www.fcneukoelln.de/) and NeNa e.V.(https://nena-verein.de/), we offer a training session on Mondays between 17:00 and 18:30 at the Otto-Hahn-Schule (Haarlemer Str. 21, 12359 Berlin). The training is open to all children and young people between the ages of eight and twelve and does not require pre-registration. The game is played on a soccer court with artificial turf. Further information can be found on the websites of the cooperation partners.

• Placementin Berlin soccer clubs:
  Football clubs are central places for integration and community. Unfortunately, however, finding a suitable club is often associated with hurdles for refugees. With the help of our club placement service, we try to find a suitable Berlin soccer club for you - close to your place of residence and tailored to your needs. All you have to do is answer a few questions and the FUSSBALL GRENZENLOS staff will get back to you with possible club suggestions that best meet your search criteria.
  
  The "Berlin Football Map" in the TEAM BERLIN APP can also help you find a suitable club.

• Tournaments:
  Regular soccer tournaments with and for refugee shelters are not only intended to enable the participating children and young people to play soccer, but also to promote intercultural exchange between the residents and staff of the various shelters. The tournaments during the Berlin school vacations in particular bring together many children and young people from different accommodation facilities. In addition, smaller tournaments are also supported, organized and carried out in individual accommodations.

• Events:
  We support (sports) events of various kinds, whether sports festivals, summer events or similar. Goal wall shooting, mini pitches or tournaments can add a lot of fun and movement to an event for children and young people in no time at all.

Many clubs are looking for committed volunteers - at the same time, refugees often lack knowledge about structures and ways to become volunteers. FUSSBALL GRENZENLOS closes this gap by offering targeted training courses.

• Coach training:
  FUSSBALL GRENZENLOS organizes an annual qualification course for coaches according to DFB standards. The special course "DFB-Basis-Coach FUSSBALL GRENZENLOS" is designed for people with their own refugee experience and/or for people who work closely (in soccer) with people with refugee experience and is free of charge for participants.
  The license course offers those interested an ideal introduction to coaching and provides participants with basic football-specific knowledge for their training work. In addition to sporting know-how, social skills, democratic values and club structures are taught - for sustainable and effective integration into voluntary work.
  The aim is to train new coaches who can apply and pass on their knowledge directly in everyday training.

No previous experience as a coach or access to a team is required to take part in the course. Please contact us for more information.

FUSBALL GRENZENLOS is part of several network and working groups (e.g. Berlin Network Football & Society), which deal with topics such as soccer, social responsibility and refugee work. The resulting proximity to other clubs, social projects and organizations, refugee shelters and other stakeholders creates a network in which experiences are exchanged, successful concepts are shared with other institutions and mutual support is provided. This results in joint projects (e.g. sports festivals and tournaments) and collaborations that create new opportunities for sporting participation and engagement. The positive examples and stories that arise through FOOTBALL WITHOUT BORDERS find their way into the public eye through effective publicity measures.