The Facts:

Country: Italy
Launched: 2007
Partners: Nike Italy, Athla, VITA, Cascina Bellaria Social Cooperative
Objectives: To give disadvantaged young women the opportunity to play sports in order to protect their health and retrieve or maintain a good level of socialisation, against any kind of conditional isolation and marginalisation.
Program Highlights:
The ability to use sport as a mean to:

• promote social community development
• enable the community to take-charge of the problems in their areas without delegating the solution to foreign organizations
• promote education, health, and women rights
• 25/30 girls from 15 to 25 years participating
• Nike is providing funding support in implement of this ambitious project

Life is not always easy and sometimes it’s necessary to fight for beliefs and objectives. Through our project we hope to empower young socially disadvantaged women and use the competition in sport to teach them mutual respect.”
Stefano D’Orazio, Project Leader

Get girls fit and actively involved in sport and all other aspects of their lives; both social and educational will improve. That is the message that Stefano D’Orazio, Project Manager is hoping to spread through his work with the Athla, Cascina Bellaria Cooperative and Nike.

The Cooperative recently launched a social project targeting young women in disadvantaged situations who are at risk of social exclusion. The target group consists of 30 Italian women aged between 15-to-25. Integration is the focus of all the activities and the project is currently in the first of three phases.

The test phase trials different sports, girls will attend one session a week, for three months. During this time observations and improvements to the project will be made and the sport that has been the most successful will be identified.

The second phase (Improvement phase) will implement improvements identified in the test phase and the girls will play that one chosen sport for another three month period.

The Phase of Joint Management (final stage) involves young women running activities for children; planning, implementing, evaluating and providing feedback. Those young women who would like to participate and who are considered suitable, will, under the supervision of the Project Manager and together with the youth workers, plan sporting pathways for disabled and non-disabled children.

Stefano D’Orazio says of the project, “Our intervention works on the premise that sport, like music, dance, free time, can be considered educational tools of intervention, capable of encouraging the participation and socialisation of youth. Sport can in fact act as an educational function to promote life values and teach social skills.”

In this manner one of the most important aspects of sport – fair play – is experienced. Sport links contest with fair play and teaches young women how to translate these vital skills into the real world.

The project hopes to empower young women, teaching them not to succumb to silly stereotypes. Playing sport and being part of a team helps the women foster relationships with peers and adults. It teaches them to honour one’s own commitments, even when not in the mood for it and to overcome moments of fickleness. It also teaches them persistence, not give up but to develop a certain degree of toughness.

“Most of all the women enjoy the opportunity to try unusual and less common sports, and for free,” says Stefano. “Many of the women were particularly interested in the third phase of the project, expressing their desire to teach children a sport in the future. And for sure, the fact that Nike is sponsoring the project has pushed many young women to participate as well.”

Visit www.nikewomen.com and vote for Italy – Ragazze in Gioco (Girls in the game) if you think this program deserves a grant from Nike.

To learn more about VITA, visit the site here.