German and UK coaches unite

The 2007 Football4Peace Project has been another great success. It has been our biggest and most ambitious endeavour to date. For ten days in July a 50-strong team of UK and German Volunteers form the University of Brighton and the German Sports University in Cologne helped to stage eleven cross-community football projects that brought together 24 Jewish and Arab communities, involving more than one thousand children and their parents as well as more than a hundred local community sports leaders.

From its modest beginnings in the small Arab town of Ibilin, today, stretching from Acco and Shfaram in the North to Meggido and Um el Fahem in the South and from Jisr-e-Zerker in the West to Tiberias in the East, F4P embraces Arab and Jewish communities the length and breadth of Israel’s Galilee Region.

In addition to the dynamic, cross-community team-building that takes place around the values-based football coaching, off-pitch this year’s Project produced some truly memorable and heart-warming moments. For instance, in the encounters between children from Emek Hayardain, El Battouf and Beer el Meksoor, the Jewish children accepted invites into the homes of their new Arab friends and were hosted for lunch before commencing the football. In the all-girl’s project one of the Arab girls went for a sleep-over in the home of a Jewish girl she had become friendly with. Once again throughout Galilee, as the children enjoyed playing football with their new pals, existing relationships among community sport leaders were strengthened and new alliances formed. more