10th Anniversary Training Camp

Press Release

In partnership with the Deutsche Sporthochschule (Cologne), the Sports Authority of Israel, the British Council and supported by the European Union, the University of Brighton is once again hosting the annual training event for the 2011 Football 4 Peace Programmes in Israel, Jordan and Ireland.

For the preceding three years the training camp has been held in Cologne.  As Football 4 Peace ends its tenth anniversary celebrations, the training camp is coming home to the Chelsea School of Sport, Eastbourne, the project’s spiritual home, where it all began with two members of staff and six students back in 2001.

Football 4 Peace involves student volunteers from UK and German Universities travelling to Israel, Jordan and Ireland with the specific aim of helping to build bridges in divided towns, villages and neighbourhoods, by training coaches in its unique methodology and curriculum and coaching football to mixed groups of Arab and Jewish children (Israel), Refugees and local children (Jordan) and children from either side of the border with the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The broader objective, alongside other civil society interventions, is to make a contribution to keeping alive the Peace Process at the level of community in these most troubled regions.

The training event is designed to prepare volunteers for the main programme in Israel and Jordan during the summer which will require them to work in 12 Cross Community Sport Partnerships, involving more than a 1400 children, from 34 Arab and Jewish communities from the Sea of Galilee in the North to the Negev Desert in the South and including projects in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv / Jaffa.

For this year’s bumper training event 54 Arab and Jewish community sport leaders from Israel, 12 from Jordan, 9 from Ireland will join with 60 volunteer coaches from Universities in England and Germany to participate in values-based football coaching sessions and team building exercises. The training camp will culminate in a Festival of Football on Saturday 2nd April with children from schools across Sussex and Kent followed by a celebration ceremony at the Eastbourne Town FC v Dulwich Hamlet FC match at Saffrons, Eastbourne.

On Saturday night the week will end with a Gala Dinner at which past and current volunteers alongside partners and long-standing friends of the programme can celebrate over a decade of positive community relations work in the Middle East and five years in Ireland.

Contact Information

The training event runs from March 29th to April 3rd 2011 and will be held at Chelsea School of Sport, University of Brighton, Denton Road, Eastbourne, Sussex, BN20 7SR.

For more information please contact:

Prof. John Sugden (Project Director)

+44 (0)1273 643729 or e-mail j.sugden@brighton.ac.uk

Graham Spacey (Projects Officer)

+44 (0)1273 643777 or e-mail gbs@brighton.ac.uk

Dr. Gary Stidder (Project Leader)

+44 (0)1273 643778 or e-mail g.stidder@brighton.ac.uk