Integration League

Integration League engages football clubs, locals and refugees through a comprehensive capacity building programme whose main aim is to promote human rights values of tolerance and inclusiveness towards refugees.

The Integration League is a football competition with mixed teams (locals + refugees) from several Italian regions, organized in close collaboration with professional football clubs from the third Italian division (Lega Pro), making available their structures, staff and professional players.

Specific goals:
1)Strengthen the welcome and orientation services of refugees through the active engagement of local communities.
2)Support the empowerment of local communities to become champions of the prevention of different forms of intolerance through sport
3)Build the capacities of football clubs to act as responsible stakeholders against prejudice and intolerance
4)Support the spread of an innovative refugees’ social inclusion model.

The project foresees a period of trainings, awareness-raising activities and competitions (group and knock-out stage), including the following actions:
– Involvement of 8 professional football clubs
– Involvement of 64 refugees and 64 locals joining in 8 mixed teams (16 pp. per team)for a total of 128 people
– 5 months of training per each competition
– 8 Human Libraries, 8 School Workshops and 8 Simulation Workshops.
– 15 matches at national level, including the final stages to be played in important Italian stadiums giving high visibility to the project.

Integration League considers the close interaction between locals and refugees as the best solution to create a sense of collaboration within the community, helping to smooth out any difference of culture and nationality. The envisaged impact is that the project will originate a process of better understanding and knowledge between cultures, combatting stereotypes by simply allowing people to play a game where they have the same rights.