FURD’s One-All project has been helping to build bridges in Barnsley. During the Easter holidays, FURD took its Streetkick game to Barnsley Football Club’s Easter camp. A team of paid and voluntary workers from FURD ran small-sided football games for children using the Streetkick inflatable pitch. Alongside the games, FURD ran educational workshops involving fun activities and class based dialogue. The purpose of the event was to promote positive messages about people from different cultural backgrounds, whether asylum-seekers, travellers or settled migrant communities, and to help young people express their understanding of diversity in a supportive environment.
Feedback from participants was that the kids really enjoyed the Streetkick and were eager to show off their skills. They also enjoyed the other activities and found the workshops very helpful and refreshing, as they found out some good things about people from different backgrounds.
One-All, funded by Comic Relief, is a young person-based project which aims to use sport and music to build lasting unity between communities. Operating in Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, it creates structured opportunities for purposeful interaction and dialogue between different ethnic communities to try to counter divisions between groups of young people.