Colombianitos Foundation using football as an educational tool<\/strong><\/li>\n

Through<\/strong> FIFA Foundation<\/strong><\/a> backing they are impacting the lives of kids across Colombia<\/strong><\/li>\n

Organisation working to build leadership skills in young people<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
When the children, hailing from 22 state schools in Bogota, arrived at the pitch, they thought they would be taking part in just another competition. The organisers had a surprise in store for them, however, mixing them all up to form new teams and then sending them out to play and to learn, particularly the latter.
\nThe tournament was just one of the many activities that the Colombianitos Foundation organises through its Goals for a Better Life programme, which uses football as an educational tool to aid the social development of Colombian girls and boys.
\nThe young people they help come mostly from disadvantaged areas where extreme violence, alcohol and drugs are all part of everyday life.
\n\u201cFootball is a very powerful tool,\u201d Marcela Chaves, director of operations at Colombianitos, told FIFA.com<\/strong>.
\n\u201cThey face situations of vulnerability and that makes them very tense,\u201d she added. \u201cThey have responsibilities that they shouldn\u2019t have. They encounter real passion in football and it gives them a chance to see that they can improve their lives.\u201d
\nThe young people who took part in that competition in Bogota learned how to get on with one another and to negotiate, by deciding on the rules, picking the teams and deciding who played where. And they did it all peacefully, without any fighting or arguing.
\n\u201cWe operate in the educational environment because there\u2019s a very pressing need for youngsters to get on better with each other at school,\u201d explained Chaves. \u201cFootball enables teachers to shape the way they think. It makes them less violent and helps them to come together.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Training leaders with the help of the FIFA Foundation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Operating in 17 urban and rural municipalities across Colombia, in areas where youngsters are most vulnerable, the Foundation runs initiatives that provided support to more than 25,000 young people in 2018. One of these initiatives is the Young Agents of Change Project, which has the backing of the FIFA Foundation<\/a>.
\nAs part of the project, the organisation selects between seven and 15 youngsters from each of the municipalities where it is present. Chosen on the basis of their leadership qualities, they develop those skills through 3football, the methodology used by FIFA.
\n\u201cMatches have three \u2018halves\u2019,\u201d explained Chaves. \u201cThere\u2019s a pre-match discussion in which we reveal what we\u2019re going to work on, followed by the game itself and then the post-match discussion, which is where the teaching element comes in. That\u2019s where the children learn so they can change.\u201d
\nThe leaders, who receive support in creating their own life projects and university grants, have obligations to fulfil.
\n\u201cThe key thing is for them to be role models for other young people,\u201d said Chaves. \u201cThey need to use sport as a means to promote social skills in their community.\u201d
\nIn schools, teachers bring these leaders in contact with other children who have a positive influence on their peers, and they all get together with the most problematic children and engage in joint training sessions. An external evaluation then assesses which youngsters have made the most progress.\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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<\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p><\/center><\/div>\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 col-sm-10 col-md-8 col-sm-offset-1 col-md-offset-2 d3-o-article__body-part--text fi-o-article__body-part--text\">\n<h3>Football winning the battle<\/strong><\/h3>\nOne of the leaders rescued by the Colombianitos programme is Juan Carlos Castro, an ex-militiaman with the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, a group that was one of the main players in the armed conflict that ravaged the country for more than half a century. \nCastro participated in workshops as part of the 80 hours of community service he was required to do after giving up his weapons. Forging ties with the young people he came into contact with, he decided to help them escape the influence of gangs and drugs. \n\u201cThe chats he gives in schools, telling young people about his experiences, are really useful for us,\u201d said Chaves. \u201cPuerto Tejada is a town close to Cali and there\u2019s a lot of violence there. One or two young people are killed every week and the help he gives is absolutely crucial there.\u201d \n\u201cI fought the guerrillas when I was a professional soldier and when I was a militiaman,\u201d said Castro, as reported by La \u00daltima<\/em>, a newspaper in Puerto Tejada. \u201cWe were sworn enemies. But I\u2019ve met some of them through the football, peace and reconciliation programme and we\u2019ve become friends. It just goes to show that football brings people together.\u201d \n<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fifa.com\/news\/colombianitos-foundation-3018920\">VIA: FIFA<\/a><\/span>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colombianitos Foundation using football as an educational tool Through FIFA Foundation backing they are impacting the lives of kids across Colombia Organisation working to build leadership skills in young people When the children, hailing from 22 state schools in Bogota, arrived at the pitch, they thought they would be taking part in just another competition. […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombianitos.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}