Mentoring pairs

Anne Méaux Pedagogy and Social Innovation Manager PLAY International France

www.play-international.org

Anne Méaux oversees the development of pedagogical innovation within PLAY International’s Laboratory, the Playlab. Within the European project of social inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers through sport, Playlab has created contents for 3 different target audiences: children, families, and unaccompanied minors. PLAY has also accompanied several organisations in France and Europe in the use of pedagogical tools to foster their actions aimed at people’s social inclusion.

Licia Corredini Projecting department and basketball coach HERON Italy

Licia is a former professional basketball player, and over the past few months she has been working as an Intern at UNHCR, supporting the Refugee Sports Coordination Team. Previously, she worked in a welcoming centre for asylum seekers, and now she’s pursuing a Master’s degree in International Studies. Licia is currently working at HERON, a local sport organisation which is promoting sport and physical activity through projects and initiatives dedicated to young people. She is keen on learning how to develop and manage sport projects for refugees!

Zina Mameri Educational Officer Fútbol Más France

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.

Juana Ruiz Saura Social Educator Fundación CEPAIM Spain

Juana Ruiz Saura has worked as a social educator with immigrants and refugees at Fundación CEPAIM since 1997. Juana has coordinated several projects with women, people at risk of social exclusion, immigrants and refugees. Since 2018 she has coordinated, together with the CAP Ciudad de Murcia, the "Play Football Together" project, a football team made up of people at risk of social exclusion and refugees, which competes in the regional league, which focuses on fostering social inclusion through sport.

Wim Poelmans Programme Manager Run Free & SPIRIT, Flemish Athletics Federation Belgium

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.

Pete Kelly Football Coach Lavapiés Dragons Football Club Spain

Pete is an Australian who has called Madrid home for 15 years. Upon arriving in Madrid he was totally swept away in the golden age of Spanish football as a fan and working in football marketing. There he met the Dragones de Lavapiés who invited him to coach a team. From that moment Pete’s obsession for football channelled into a much more meaningful calling, using football as a means to achieve impactful goals in the sphere of sustainable development, DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) and inclusion of refugees.

Katerina Salta Co-founder/Manager Hestia FC Greece

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.

Panos Papageorgiu Head of the Development Department ARSIS – Association for the Social Support of Youth Greece

Panos Papageorgiou is the Head of the Development Department at ARSIS and is responsible for proposal and project design and grant-making in the thematic areas related to response to the refugee crisis, defence of human rights, child protection, homelessness and integration of vulnerable groups. Prior to his work at ARSIS, he worked for various sport clubs and took part in sport for development, inclusion and integration projects in Greece and Scotland. Panos holds a master’s degree in Sport Management by the University of Stirling.

Hanna Havstam Ghodrati Project Leader at Street Games project RF-SISU Vastra Gotaland Sweden

www.havstamfotografi.com

Hanna Johansson is a Project Manager at RF-SISU Västra Götaland and StreetGames Gothenburg om Sweden. She holds a master’s degree in Photo & Media Production through Linkoping University. Originally, she got her Photo and Journalistic degree while living among mountains in Alaska where she also played college basketball. For the past three years, she has been working at the sports organisation RF-SISU Västra Götaland with the project StreetGames, which harnesses the power of sport to create positive change in disadvantaged areas in the West Coast district of Sweden. She is currently working on ISCA’s MOVE Beyond project, where she is working in partnership with Save the Children Region West on a pilot project that has put refugees in the driver’s seat of sports activities as Intercultural Coordinators of Physical Activity.

Margareta Toivanen Project Manager Monaliiku ry Finland

Margareta is a project manager at Monaliiku ry, well-being and sport non-govermental organisation for multicultural women. She started working with people from refugee background since 2013 when she started to teach women in the swimming club Cetus. After that, she worked in the Institute of Adult Education in Helsinki guiding and helping immigrant customers to find suitable Finnish courses for them. At Monaliiku, she has refuge customers in the exercise mentoring program she’s managing. Margareta is also teaching swimming on several levels for immigrant women.

Gerald Mballe Special Olympics Advisor for unified with refugees presso Special Olympics Special Olympics Italy

www.specialolympics.org

Gerald Mballe is Special Olympics’ first-ever Advisor for Unified with Refugees programming, strengthening and expanding its reach and impact. Gerald joined the world of Special Olympics in 2015 in Turin, Italy as a recognised refugee, after fleeing Cameroon as an unaccompanied minor. His trajectory since has been an inspiration, fuelled by hard work and a passion for equality, tolerance and inclusion. His commitment to inclusive sports, and social inclusion worldwide, has been captured by ESPN and has taken Gerald to various refugee fora and conference around the world, both as ambassador for Special Olympics and as Red Cross Cultural Mediator. He also became a young leader for Sport at service of Humanity and is involved in advocacy and integration imitative for refugees in his community.

Aitor Hernandez Executive Director Fútbol Más Spain Spain

Aitor studied Psychology at the Autónoma de Madrid University, where he also specialised in Social Psychology through a postgraduate course. During his Psychology studies he did an internship in Peru, with the Fútbol Más Foundation, where he fell in love with its projects and methodology, as they brought together three of his great passions: children and young people, sport and social psychology. He started up the project in Spain and currently is the executive director at Fútbol Más Spain.

Adnan Abdul Ghani Migration Expert Save the Children Region West Sweden

Adnan is a migration expert who works for Save the Children in Sweden, where he developed the Re-Act Model for refugees’ empowerment, self-organisation and strategic cooperation. As a refugee from Syria, he started a movement to train refugees to lead community activities and initiated the Support Group Network (SGN), the first refugee-led organisation in Sweden. He’s also a thematic adviser for Region Västra Götaland for its regional development strategy 2020 to 2030 and a member of EU Commission Expert Group on migration, asylum and integration.

Marisa Schlenker Volunteer Gemeinde Bermatingen Germany

Marisa Schlenker is a sport for development consultant with over 7 years experience supporting international projects in various capacities from impact measurement, facilitation, project management and monitoring, evaluation and learning. She is passionate about social justice and gender equity in and through sport. She has experience of supporting her local town's integration officer in the design of a sport and intercultural event series starting in 2021, as well as working as a project support officer at Girl Power and a researcher with the Global Goals World CUP EU project.

Saska Benedicic Tomat Head of Projects International Sport and Culture Association Slovenia

Saska Benedicic Tomat is the Head of Projects at ISCA, where she has coordinated more than 20 EU-supported projects (including four Preparatory Actions in the field of Sport) and 10 international conferences for stakeholders in grassroots sport since 2009. She has also had a career working at Special Olympics Europe/Eurasia. She has more than 5 years of EU project management experience in the Integration of Refugees Through Sport (IRTS) field (Manager for the MOVE Beyond and four IRTS projects), and many international or national mentoring expertise. She lives in Slovenia with husband, 3 adult kids, and a bunch of pets.

Anca Oana Serediuc Physical education teacher and aerobics fitness trainer Association Sport for All Suceava (volunteer) Romania

Anca is a physical education teacher and aerobics fitness trainer and a volunteer member of the Association Sport for All Suceava. She holds a degree in Kinesiology, physical education and sports and a master's degree in physical education in school and extracurricular activities. Anca was involved in many projects related to sports and other fields.

Khalida Popal Founder & Director Girl Power and commercial & women’s Football lead Girl Power & FC Nordsjaelland Denmark

Campaigner, FIFA legend, Activist, fonder & director Girl Power Organisation. A true fighter who has the first-hand experience of not one, but a number of battles against abuse, for representation and inclusion in elite sport. Khalida Popal Former Capitan & founder of the first-ever Afghanistan women's National Team. Former first female board member of Afghanistan Football Federation. Khalida Popal graduated Sport and marketing management from Copenhagen business academy, she has gotten her leadership degree from Women’s Leadership Academy University of Chichester.

Dolores Galindo President Dragones de Lavapiés Spain

Dolores is the president of Dragones de Lavapiés, a football club with 320 people coming from 41 different countries based in Madrid that shows that super-diversity is a trigger for solidarity, respect and care. There are no refugee programmes at the club, but it collaborates with organisations that receive them offering free places in its teams. Dolores is a journalist and specialist in International Information, Historical Documentary Scripts and holds a researching proficiency in Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Desmond Tomlinson National Coordinator Football Association of Ireland Republic of Ireland

Des originally from London with Jamaican heritage, has over 25 years professional working experience in inclusion through sports, exercise, and physical activities. Des has worked as the Intercultural Football National Coordinator at the Football Association of Ireland since 2006 with responsibility for the development and implementation oversight of its intercultural strategy, related policies, programmes, & initiatives designed to target the increased participation of people from diverse cultural, national, or ethnic minority backgrounds and to also challenging racism/discrimination in football & by extension society. Internationally as part of pan European collaborative partnerships Des project manages for the FAI Ireland based actions for various thematic sport inclusion/sustainability projects co-funded by the EU, including Sport Welcomes Refugees, Mobility and Exchange, Sport Inclusion women and girls.

Dillon Richardson Performance and Development Manager World Para Powerlifting at International Paralympic Committee Germany

www.fai.ie

Dillon Richardson works as the World Para Powerlifting Performance and Development Manager at the International Paralympic Committee where he oversees different projects and activities related to the sport. Dillon helped launch key initiatives in the sport and Paralympic Movement on gender equity, diversity and inclusion, and sport for development, including the development of refugee programme for Para powerlifting. Dillon holds a bachelor’s degree in Physical and Health Education and a master’s degree in Human Kinetics and Sport Management.