Champions Factory Ireland completed NFE trainings with volunteers. Due to the situation with Covid-19 restrictions in Ireland there were no urban sport events in 2020 so we needed to postpone activities with volunteers for this year. Champions Factory therefore decided to use their partnership with Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI) organisation and join forces to implement our activities with volunteers. SARI works with migrant and ethic minority communities and organises sport festival Football for Unity which combines football tournaments, boxing and capoeira workshops. We are happy that our volunteers from Ireland managed to complete both NOOB and PRO levels as well as participate at the sport festival. 15 volunteers were recruited to participate in the project. NFE NOOB training was held beginning of August while PRO level was held end of September. Total of 9 volunteers participated in our training sessions.
Volunteers got to learn more about our project as well as Champions Factory Ireland organisation. Through various icebreakers and team building activities they managed to relax and practice their critical thinking skills throughout the training course. Volunteers got to explore the theme of volunteering as well as what work is involved in organisation of sport event.
The sport festival ran over a number of days and volunteers registered for certain days to support the event. The tasks that the volunteers were responsible for included COVID track and trace, team registration, distribution of bottles and snacks to players, stewarding (directing players to the appropriate pitches), communicating with registered teams regarding availability, match fixtures, refereeing on the day, assistant child protection officer, social media, logging scores on the score board, event set up and packing up of equipment.
The tournament ran throughout the month of August, with USCV volunteers supporting throughout. All 15 volunteers took part in volunteering at this event. There was a debriefing meeting with SARI staff and the USCV volunteers at the end of August regarding the takeaways of the event. Topics discussed included the last-minute cancellation of teams, closing ceremony, the possibility of including a learning element for players as well and pre-match trainings offered by SARI for participating teams. The volunteers were then invited to fill out their details for the YouthPass Certificate and this was printed and distributed to the volunteers in the SARI office.
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