09-02-2017 | di COOPI

Lebanon: the importance of sports for Syrian refugees

COOPI, in collaboration with UISP (Unione Italiana Sport per Tutti - Italian Union of Sports for All) has created a 5-a-side football pitch at the Waha Collective Center in the municipality of Deddeh, near Tripoli (northern Lebanon), on land made available to the project by the municipal administration.

The Waha Collective Center is a structure, formerly used as a shopping center, which currently houses over 100 Syrian refugee families and in which COOPI has intervened with a previous project in order to provide electricity through renewable sources (solar panels and wind turbines).

The project was made possible thanks to the funds raised by UISP in the framework of the Giocagin 2016 Campaign and was carried out by COOPI staff in Lebanon together with some of the most vulnerable Syrian workers, who provided paid labour through the Rapid Generation Income method, or through the creation of days/work that allowed a temporary increase in income to some heads of families living at the Waha Collective Center.

SPORT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIEF

The collaboration with UISP will allow in a next phase also the realization of a sport-educational workshop of learning to dialogue and creative techniques for conflict management for young Syrian refugees.  The experience UISP has developed over the years in emergency contexts has in fact allowed to develop a path of use of sport as a tool for resilience in order to improve living conditions and social cohesion for refugees and displaced persons involved.

In Lebanon, in particular, Syrian children have very difficult access to basic services and almost no access to sports facilities that can contribute to a harmonious development of individuality and psychological relief of trauma suffered as a result of the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The population of the Waha Center (which has about 600 children) had no access to sports or recreational activities before the project was implemented. The existing groups of young people supported by UNHCR within the Waha Collective Center, in fact, are a resource that until now had not found places and spaces of free expression.

IMPROVING ONE'S LIVING CONDITIONS

Thanks to the project, therefore, not only has a 20x40 m football field been created by reclaiming a site that originally housed a landfill, but also a short training course for a few dozen young Syrian refugees that can allow them to become more active and proactive actors in improving their living conditions and the territory in which they currently live.

Next spring the plant will be officially inaugurated and handed over to the municipal administration of Deddeh, which will allow free access to all and will provide at its own expense for routine maintenance.

Giuseppe Cammarata, Head of Mission COOPI Lebanon