Polish Fare member Foundation for Freedom, a human rights NGO working since 2004 to empower minority groups, women and youth in Poland, is looking to further in 2015 a series of anti-discrimination and capacity building activities initiated during the 2014 Football People action weeks.

The positive response to the training and workshops of the 'Fair Play With Other' initiative made the organisation consider the continuity of the project in 2015.

"We are planning to run the workshop this year as well even though the project is officially over. The next workshop we have planned is with the College d'Europe Natolin staff, but we haven't fixed a date yet." said Magdalena Zaborowska of Foundation for Freedom.

'Fair Play With Other'
In October 2014, the Warsaw-based NGO, one of the 15 Event Grant recipients, developed a nationwide project focused on empowering local minorities through sport, while raising awareness of discrimination and promoting capacity development of leaders in grassroots clubs and communities, sports coaches, teachers and university students.

Between October and November 2014, 'Fair Play With Other', composed of a manual, a series of workshops and a photo exhibition, toured around the Polish cities of Białystok, Kraków, Wrocław, Warsaw and Sochaczew, to carry out trainings on methods that combine social inclusion and sports to over 45 participants.

The manual and the exhibition, also produced by Foundation for Freedom, focused on providing insight on how to develop multi-cultural activities, workshop proposals and games and show how these can be put into practice through examples, such as the ETNOLIGA (an inter-cultural football league).

Additionally, the ETNOLIGA exhibition was also displayed at the 'Fair Play for All' tournament organised as part of an international youth exchange in Gródek (Białystok).

"The training and manual are dedicated to local leaders and educators and aims to: broaden their knowledge on good practice examples in sport for inclusion and intercultural dialogue; provide new skills to discuss the topics of fair play, social inclusion and youth; teach active methods to discuss the issues around discrimination; share experience; and be a source of inspiration and motivation on raising awareness of social exclusion, respect and fair play." explained Zaborowska.

As part of the organisation's plans to further the 'Fair Play With Others' project, the manual has been distributed to several other institutions including the Education faculty of the Warsaw University, local NGOs and activist groups in Warsaw, Białystok, Kraków, Wrocław and Gródek, Jagiellonia Białystok FC and the College d'Europe.

Goals for 2015
In 2015, as part of its work on the grounds of sport and inclusion, the NGO will continue to develop educational activities for children and support families living in refugee centres in Warsaw; hold workshops in schools on cultural diversity developed by immigrants; and is hoping to become a hosting organisation of the Europe-wide project Voluntary Service, which promotes youth interchanges and voluntary work abroad.

"Each year we also try to organise one project within Erasmus+, either a youth exchange or a seminar/training course for youth workers, such as Sport for Dialogue Seminar 2013.

"This year we would like to organise a training for trainers, but we still don't know if we will have enough people and financial support to put into practice all these plans." added the NGO representative.

Simultaneously, the Polish Fare member will continue to give special emphasis to its main projects ETNOLIGA and Academy, the latter of which is a resource to strengthen the learning of the Polish language based on interactive methods for both of young refugees and Poles.

Two editions of the inter-cultural football tournament ETNOLIGA will run in the Spring and Autumn of 2015.