Making sport an engine for change and a tool for combating educational poverty
THE PROJECT
As part of the Sport for Change programme, Fondazione Milan created “From Milan to the World”, the contest-initiative in partnership with PUMA that saw the participation of six non-profit associations from all continents.
Representing Europe, and our city, the Kayròs Association of Vimodrone (MI) took part in the charity competition. The association hosts minors involved in criminal measures and people from difficult family and social situations in its community centres, with the aim of giving young people an opportunity for social redemption. In tandem with educational and scholastic support and job search activities, planned ad hoc for each boy, the association uses sport, and in particular football, as an educational and socialising tool that can effectively contribute to the recovery and subsequent reintegration of young people into society.
THE PURPOSES
The territory in which Kayròs operates is characterised by the presence of adolescents and young adults living in contexts of strong marginality and socio-economic hardship; educational poverty, normally linked to economic poverty, and caused by a general lack of socio-cultural stimuli and training support, means that there are many young people who drop out of school early, often ending up developing and manifesting deviant behaviour.
According to the Observatory on Juvenile Detention Centres, in 2019 Lombardy was the region with the highest number of reports (5,393), with the city of Milan alone counting 169 admissions to the Centres of First Reception. Of these, about half are then placed in a community, and then assigned to alternative measures to detention. This is the context in which Kayròs operates, supporting the educational and re-educational path of the young people hosted in its community centres, through school and work orientation activities, workshops, cultural and sporting activities, both individual and group, aimed at encouraging the development of personal autonomy and maturity, self-esteem and self-confidence, the spirit of initiative, respect for others and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Sport is therefore the ideal tool for the social recovery of young people, who have the opportunity to rediscover their talents, develop communication and interpersonal skills and, finally, learn to respect the limits and rules of the game, which are then reflected in those dictated by civil society
THE BENEFICIARIES
The project is aimed at a group of about 20 young people, both Italian and foreign, aged between 14 and 24, living in the Kayròs communities in Vimodrone. These are young people taken into care by the USSM and placed on a re-educational path, as offenders, and therefore in conflict with the law and society, or young people taken into care by the municipal social services, as they come from contexts of family, social or economic hardship, and are considered at high risk of dropping out of school.
