Making sport an engine for change and a tool and fighting educational poverty
THE PROJECT
As part of the Sport for Change programme, Fondazione Milan created “From Milan to the World”, a contest-initiative in partnership with PUMA that saw the participation of six non-profit associations from all continents. The concrete ambition of the initiative was to donate 50,000 euros to the winning programme for the development of the proposed project.
The contest was won by Alice for Children, an association that has been active for 15 years in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. The organisation is committed to helping 2,500 children grow up, providing them with educational and medical support, food and clothing. Thanks to its commitment and the construction of schools and orphanages, the children are removed from the infernal circle of child labour and guaranteed a basic education. The children’s education and growth also includes sport, which not only gives them back the carefree spirit of childhood, but also takes them away from contexts of violence, abuse and exploitation.
THE PURPOSES
The socio-educational intervention includes a wide-ranging programme of support activities aimed at offering girls from the slums a safe place to grow up, far from the abuse and suffering associated with a culture deeply marked by inequality and gender violence.
The initiative is based on the conviction that sport, in tandem with educational activities and psychological support, can be the perfect tool to allow girls to become strong and independent women in the future: competition on the field will become a pretext to recognise their strength and their value, and then learn to fight for their rights and for a more inclusive society.
THE BENEFICIARIES
The beneficiaries of the project are more than 1,300 girls aged between 10 and 18, adolescents or pre-adolescents who are entering what, in the slums even more than elsewhere, is the most delicate and insidious phase for them. The girls live in the slums of Dandora and Korogocho and attend the association’s partner schools; despite the different characteristics and living conditions of each one, abuse, suffering and abandonment are often sad circumstances that unite them, particularly in the period of childhood and adolescence.
