Open Fun Football Schools

Albertina ad Astra

Since December 2019, the Croatia-based NGO Albertina ad Astra is a legal successor of the Cross Cultures Croatia, implementing the programme OFFS in Croatia.

Albertina ad Astra is non-profit organisation for education, counselling and social responsibility programmes (for all age groups), but children and youth are primary target groups.

Type of Organisation: NGO

Open Fun Football Schools (OFFS) have brought thousands of children, parents, coaches, teachers and other community members together in an effort to promote peaceful religious and ethnic coexistence, gender equality, tolerance and social cohesion.

The OFFS programme provides a platform upon which children and adults from different ethnic and social backgrounds can communicate and develop long-lasting, meaningful, and integrated relationships. The programme is addressed to families, children and youth exposed to long-term violence in post-war areas, and localities once exposed to ethnic cleansing, atrocities of war and hatred.

Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA) was founded to run an OFFS programme in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1998, as a peace building intervention. Focusing on children between the ages of 6 and 12, CCPA makes a concerted effort to include children from disadvantaged backgrounds, children with disabilities, and children of marginalised populations.

The OFFS programme seeks to provide communities with the necessary means and training to ensure the programme and serves the overarching values of peaceful coexistence, gender equality, tolerance, and social cohesion and takes away the breeding ground for radicalisation.

These football matches, organised by adult victims from the War in Former Yugoslavia and dedicated to youngsters, is an inspiring way in which countries can include victims in strengthening social cohesion and taking away further tensions in countries after a long period of violence.

The Open Fun Football Schools programme is based on the Danish “fun football” methodology and pedagogy, using sport and fun games as a tool for education and prevention. Training provided to volunteer coaches includes theoretical and practical sessions and workshops with relevant topics in child psychology, pedagogy and kinesiology.

Training is followed by the distribution of a handbook with all relevant topics and games, Child Protection Workbook 2018, OFFS + SSP handbooks and training modules used in the local community.

Starting with the 2019-2020 school year, we added online webinars and workshops via Zoom.

Address

Albertin ad astra,
Hribarov prilaz 10,
10000 Zagreb,
Croatia

Contact person: Renata Gomaz
Telephone: +385 98 808 241
ccpazagrebgmail [dot] com (Email) | Website