Sports as an inclusive social policy
Physical activity that make us closer
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We made the Mandela Forum venue available to all citizens, mainly to persons that are outcast or unable to use structures for physical activities. This was the goal of the project named “Sports for everyone, a strategy for social inclusion”, promoted by the Nelson Mandela Forum together with the Foundation Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, that began on October 25th 2005.
Since the beginning dedicated to sports and during the years more and more consecrated to shows, Mandela Forum gets back to its roots with an initiative that wants to reassess sport as a matter of social relations and aggregation of different generations and territories, of community, of boroughs.
Many subjects have already joined the project: the Council of Foreign Inhabitants of Florence, the Italian Association for Multiple Sclerosis, Auser Self-management Services and Solidarity, National Association Families of Subnormal Babies and Adults, Italian Association Blind People.
The members of these associations will be able to use the structures of the Mandela Forum in the period in which the venue will otherwise be closed or just partly used by the sport societies that use the venue as their gymnasium for training.
Beside the usual basketball, fencing, boxing, free climbing activities, starting October 25th other activities will take place in the venue due to the mentioned project: soft physical training for elder people associated with yoga, physical training for disabled persons, Torbal for blind people, basketball courses for foreigners, rehabilitation physical training for people affected by multiple sclerosis.
“Sports for everyone, a strategy for social inclusion” is dedicated in particular to those persons (kids, elders, immigrants, disabled persons, young people and all other groups which are specially exposed to marginalization) who are not part of the competitive sport system, giving them the possibility to approach the structure free of charge. Mandela Forum is open 11 months a year, 6 days a week: for 3 hours a day Mandela Forum could be used for this meaning, hosting 30/40 person at the time.
The project “Sports for everyone, a strategy for social inclusion” will be supported by a communication campaign made of posters, brochures, playbills.
“Sports for everyone, a strategy for social inclusion” is just one of many solidarity initiatives carried on by Mandela Forum. Initiative that have in common the purpose to awake and involve citizens in social and civil issues.
