In the opening day of our Balkans tour, we saw the inspiring work that Our Kids Foundation does to give orphans in Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina a quality of life that is so unique in a nation lacking in welfare money and having to rebuild itself.
On the second day, it was time to take the opportunity to use Football Beyond Borders’ ethos of tolerance to teach the children valuable lessons through the use of our own sports workshops. As the children were of mixed gender, age and footballing ability, we had to create exercises that ensured that everyone could work together and be happy, whilst also learning lessons of teamwork and not to compete with one another too strongly.
This was achieved through training drills that got progressively higher in intensity and seriousness. One such preliminary exercise was a simple type of tag game where all of the children ended up having to work together as a ‘tag snake’ that would have to travel around the arena, having to all pull one way or the other to remain successfully joined at the hand. Doing this with a group of children without any knowledge of the language challenges the children’s concentration and ability to communicate effectively.
Once this and a couple of more ice-breaking sessions were complete, the children were ready to learn new skills. Short, one and two-touch drills ensured that they had to be always reliant on the team as a whole to score. One such game was a netball/football cross, where the children could only score with a header, passing the ball to one another on the small court without dribbling. After this, it was time to begin pure football training, with games where they had to all pass to one another before scoring, or with only one, two touches before passing. This markedly improved their understanding of one another’s strengths and weaknesses and ensured that everyone was fully engaged in the exercise.
By the end of the workshop, what was most pleasing to note was that, despite the hefty language barrier with none of us speaking more than a few words of Bosnian, the children were laughing together and congratulating one another, whether older or younger, male or female. This was the power of sport in action in a still-fragmented society where the aim is still often for children to disregard their peers and be overly-individual, due to short supply of opportunities.
The end of the day had to be spent planning ahead, however, as perhaps the most long-lasting impact of our work in Mostar was still to be realised. This was because the next day we would embark on our most ambitious project of the tour so far – a tournament bringing together the academies of teams either side of this divided city – including its two largest clubs of Bosnian Premier League fame – Velez and Zrinjski – hated rivals who never normally mix without negative tensions arising.
Come back tomorrow to see how this tournament inspired Mostar, with the potential to create long-term harmony to a new generation who completely deserve it.
Read the whole of our Football Beyond Borders coverage here.
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