Asd Sportinzona Melina Miele

Our Mission

Sportinzona Melina Miele is a sport association that was born in 2010 in order to promote social inclusion trough sport. It was founded by people that want to make a change in their community. The founders, the board members and the staff have in common the passion for sports and a background as social workers or civil right's activism or as a volunteer of the organization. CONTEST ANALYSIS In Milan there are nearly 114,000 young adults between 11 and 20 years old, around 24,000 among them come from a foreign country. A large portion of it does not have access to sport for economic, social and cultural reason and this build higher barriers on the path of integration and cohesion, especially for migrant young generations. Moreover, in the last years it has been noted a serious abandonement of sport practice in younger generations, with negative consequences on their health and socialization with other young people and opening to disadvantage bringing in some cases to the increase of negative behaviours. (From the 2017 Special Eurobarometer on Sport and physical activity emerged that Italy is not one of the best perfomer. The 62% of the of respondents never exercise or play sport and just the 1% are the most likely to exercise or play sport regularly, which is the lowest rate in EU.) There is a real need to promote sport not just as a way to improve physical appereance, as it is perceived for the 33% of respondents of the report, but as a vehicle of well being, inclusion and social values. The organization aims to convert this perception through a series of communication and empirical activities that will impress the audience. It aims to demonstrate the positive effects from which people can benefit (making sport/physical activity a part of their everyday lives, spending time with disadvantage people and new citizens) as individual and part of a community. One of the aim of our projects is to develop an exchange relationship between sport societies and socio-educational subjects which will have the following effects: - creating more sport opportunities for young generations living in the city, especially disadvantaged urban areas, in order to foster their access to social rights; - breaking down access barriers to sport societies for disadvantaged young people and encouraging the creation of a varied context from a social and cultural point of view; - innovating the sport associations and societies approach by enhancing the educational and inclusive feature carachterising the relational dimension of sport. In the last years we found on the field that in order to do an ficient educational work with kids, playing soccer, volleyball, rugby or basketball is the first step for the beginning of a important human relationship. MISSION SPORTINZONA seeks to address the main Milan's city urban challenges of the inequities, polarized communities,as well as micro/macro segregation emerging in all the Milanese areas. For this reason, sport could be identified as a complementary and integrated means to face them. To furtherly implement those aspects, there is a need of three types of experienced professionists: sport technicians, educators and volunteers specifically trained on those aspects. Generally speaking, according to the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations , the practice of sport and the incentivation of sports through the event will contribute to sustainable development and to the establishment of a climate of peace, tolerance and respect among people. vertheless, the entire event will support the rising of awareness among younger generations on the social potential that sport practice can generate bringing to: new and more traditional ways of socializing, creation of a greater sense of ownership to the community, respect and knowledge of different cultures, respect of common rules and civic engagement, incentivation to volunteering actions, affirmation of new non-formal places and methods of educating youth. In particular sport will allow to raise awareness on the importance of policy geneder toright the message that sport is accessible to everybody: man, female, disadvantaged and disabled people and new citizens. As indirect effect our projects tackles the issues of: early school drop out, cohesion and fight against racism and xenophobia, respect of civic obligations and rules avoiding disaffection to institutional life, alongside with the topic of healthy standards of life (avoidance of drug abuse, healthy eating habits, healthy non web based socialization options). OBJECTIVES The main objectives of the projects are: 1. Experimenting an integrated and multidisciplinary practice combining different fields of intervenction; 2. Encouraging the development of a methodology that allows the enhancement of sport as an educational opportunity that contaminates both the skills and knowledge of the educators and sports technicians; 3. Organizing events; 4. Encouraging the development of "sport as a means of social inclusion city policy" with the public administration-private ngo's stakeholders network 5. Offering opportunities for sports to people who are usually excluded due to access barriers; 6. Support social inclusion processes by promoting the possibility of creating new groups in which subjects from different cultural and social backgrounds meet and compare sport as a cross community action and instrument. ACTIVITIES Sportinzona would like to be an infrastucture to fill the gap. The organization is working with professional educators, pedagogists, sociologists, psichologists, trainers, with specific formal training and certified sport skills with the following activities: 1) build networks for social projects that use sports as a tool and opportunity for a better reach of kids with disadvantage backgrounds. 2) organization of sport activities such as team trainings, tournaments events in the outskirt areas of Milan's city. 3) setting a No League sport-educative methodolgy that has an important educative impact, using sport has the main efficienct tool. 4) acrivities in order to promote a change in the grassroot's sport culture where the differences can be a richness for all. Meetings, trainings workshops, conferences. 5) activities thet promote innovation in the working methods, giving voice to the actors and to the the participants in the evaluation process. European projects, multi tasking events with music, culture, sport engaging the No League community in the organization. 6) engage the trainers, educators, kids and family in a community path where everybody is important and connected trough links over the sport field into other life's fields 7) active citizenship activities for the community, involving the actors of the projects in different and changing roles during the different phases of the projects. From being an athlete and player, kids can become trainers and referees as soon as they get older and they still want to support the organization's programs. The organization will provide trainings and tools in collaboration with the national and local sports federations, universities, schools etc.

Our organization has one main umbrella project: No League, with different targetted projects: No League social games, No League all star, No League@school, sport4trotter.

The project NO LEAGUE, use sport as a tool to promote positive values such as inclusion, equality, cooperation, respect and solidarity. Within an integrated public-private system, we seek to see a change in the approach to sport by breaking down silos and taking a more streamlined and holistic method, especially for what concern the creation of an integration between social service and sport. The idea is to develop a multidisciplinary board combining the capacity building of the public stakeholders, the academic know-how and the expertise of sport and social-educational territorial subjects. Being together is the prerequisite for a better inclusion, because it is evident now more than ever that it is possible to overcome challenges only if "no one is left behind". To do this it is necessary to create a network that aggregates the most relevant players in Milan, not only in sport field.