Mentoring pairs

Benjamin Renauld is in charge of the Kraainem Football Club’s project called ‘We Welcome Young Refugees’. This initiative was launched in September 2015, in the midst of the migration crisis that hit Europe. Since then, Kraainem FC has adapted its daily life in order to welcome unaccompanied minors into its ranks. They aim at helping young refugees and asylum seekers to integrate within the club. Established as a small-scale grassroots initiative, Kraainem Football Club’s is now leading a European pilot project. The club has welcomed about 2500 youngsters and supports them on their journey towards integration in their new host country.

Frigyes Hegyi has played football since his childhood. When he was twenty years old, he founded an amateur football club at a segregated Roma settlement for kids coming from a very disadvantaged background. With his team, Frigyes met the Oltalom Sport Association at a friendly match, where he became a player first then a coach. Today he holds training sessions at a girl’s penitentiary, at children's home and at the open training sessions conducted by Oltalom, trying to reach refugees.

Cristina Vladescu believes that sport is one of the best tools to bring people from different cultures together and stay connected. She is a psychologist and has been working for Terre des hommes for almost 10 years on topics related to sport, inclusion, fair-play, resilience and working with children and families affected by migration, refugees and asylum seekers, safeguarding children in sports. Besides working within projects and programmes implemented by Terre des hommes in Romania, she has also provided training and coaching to other Terre des hommes delegations from Egypt, Jordan and Albania. Cristina believes in and promotes child participation through a methodology called “Movement, Games and Sport” and all the other tools developed by Terre des hommes for working with children and young people.

Mihai Androhovici has 22 years of experience in the field of high school and university education in Romania. For 4 years he coordinated the Suceava County Directorate for Sports (2005-2009) for the implementation of the sports policies at regional level of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Since 2009 he has been doing the same thing as a Regional Councilor. This involves carrying out sports and social integration activities for various target groups: young people, women, the elderly, detainees, immigrants. Mihai is the Romanian Federation Sport for All Vice President and under the umbrella of this national organisation he has coordinated MOVE Week, European School Sport Day and was a #BeActive Ambassador for European Week of Sport.

Gerardina Caputo is a member of Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Dojo Karate Pyros. She is responsible for projects that involve the most vulnerable groups (young people at risk, the elderly, refugees, disabled) and she is responsible, together with her team, for designing and implementing actions that have an important impact on the territory and on people's lives. She collaborates with various sports federations and with many voluntary organisations to create networks that support project actions.

Marta Cristianini has been working since 2016 in welcome centres for asylum seekers, coordinating various areas: health care, job training and integration activities. She believes that guiding third country nationals towards their autonomy is essential for collaborating with different local entities to offer integration opportunities, such as language, professional or sport-related training, and to allow people to connect with the local community. This work connected her with the Liberi Nantes association with whom she has been actively collaborating for the past year on a project to promote activation and inclusion of disadvantaged youngsters in Rome through football.

Wim Poelmans works as the manager of the ‘Run Free’ programme for the Flemish Athletics Federation. Thanks to this European project, refugees in refugee camps can participate in free and accessible running trainings. Wherever possible, the projects builds bridges between the refugee camps and the local athletics clubs. Wim studied social work. He is co-founder of Les Gazelles de Bruxelles, a sports club for refugees, newcomers and people in poverty, where they offer accessible running trainings in the Brussel capital region.

Having graduated from the Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, majoring in Football, Vasiliki Anastasopoulou has been working in the sport sector for the last 9 years. She also holds a UEFA A level license. From June 2019 until September 2020, she worked as a sports educator in the sports4change programmes of Organization Earth in Athens, Greece, aiming at the social integration of young refugees and women through sports.

Zina Mameri is an Algerian pedagogue and engineer specialising in adapted physical education. Zina currently works for Fútbol Más in France as an educational officer for their migration and refugees projects. At the moment in France, Fútbol Más has two programmes that work with migration and refugees. The first one is access to work through sports and the second one aims to give access to displaced youth in emergency centres.

Nagin Ravand is a second-year bachelor student in Education Science. Nagin came to Denmark from Afghanistan with her family as a child, and ever since has been interested in sport as a stronger force. Nagin started playing football at the age of 9, and can proudly say today that she has created a women's football department. Nagin has coordinated “DIF Get2Sport” project activities in Denmark, with special purpose of activating non-western girls. In addition, she has successfully recruited more women as coaches and leaders to practice football.

Katerina Salta is the Sport for Protection Programme Manager of the International Olympic Truce Centre. She studied Marketing in Athens and for the last 5 years she has worked to provide solidarity and support to refugee and migrant populations in Athens, Greece. Katerina designs and manages educational and recreational programmes for adults and children focusing on sports. Among others, she has collaborated with Barcelona Foundation, Youri Djorkaeff Foundation, UEFA, UEFA Foundation for Children and UNICEF. Her most recent programme is Hestia FC, the first refugee and migrant women football team in South-Eastern Europe.

Mridul Kataria is a master’s candidate in development studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He has been involved in the IRTS field for more than a year and is focusing his research on the local integration of refugees through sport in Geneva. He is carrying out a study on Flag21, a local organisation that seeks to do the same. He has a background in working in the area of education, child protection and children’s rights.

Gena Sturgon founded Play2EDUCATE, a Kosovo NGO that uses games and dialogue to develop positive relationships, prevent antisocial behaviour and build resilient youth. She has used sport to include refugees in Uganda and the USA. She holds a Master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies with the thesis: ‘Through the Security Actor’s Lens: Perceived Effectiveness of Involvement in Youth Sport Interventions in Kosovo’. She also has bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology & Sport and Exercise Science. Gena is also a Young Delegate with ENGSO Youth’s Inclusion Working Group.