Sports Without Borders, a not-for-profit organisation that provides support to young people of migrant and refugee backgrounds, held its second National Community Sports Conference at Moonee Valley Function Centre in Melbourne last month. The theme of the conference, Social Inclusion and Sport for Australia’s Disadvantaged Groups, addressed the needs of a cross section of society including women, those with disabilities, Indigenous Australians and those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.

The conference was attended by a range of delegates interested in the participation and inclusion issues that surround sport and the community. These included local and federal government leaders such as the Minister for, Senator the Hon Kate Lundy, who along with Indigenous elder Ron Murray, opened the conference.

While the conference addressed a number of key topics in Australian sport, top of the discussion list was Australia’s current inability to provide the benefits of sport to all citizens. In addition to the obvious health benefits, the conference highlighted sport as an important platform for promoting inclusion and social cohesion at the community level (e.g. a sense of belonging, shared experiences and lifelong friendships) and valuable life skills at the individual level (e.g. leadership, co-operation, discipline, respect and tolerance).

In fact sport was credited as the glue that binds a community, pulling people together and reaching out to those that face exclusion or discrimination. Clem Rodney, State Coordinator of the WA Department of Sport and Recreation’s Indigenous Sport Program, explained how communities can use sport to address important health and social justice issues.

‘Grassroots sport and active recreation play a core role in promoting healthy and vibrant communities’, he said. ‘Sport can also be a vehicle to promote and address many social and environmental issues in the community.’

Participants spent time in interactive workshops which targeted key issues such as grant applications, club marketing and brokering partnerships. An interactive workshop on the role of partnerships looked at how alliances contribute to increased participation by disadvantaged communities. A great example of this was presented in a best practice case-study for CALD communities.

Sports Without Borders teamed up with the City of Melbourne to develop and implement the Carlton Community Sports Carnival 2012 project. In conjunction with partners such as the University of Melbourne, the Carlton Football Club, The Drum Youth Services, YMCA and North Yarra Community Centre, a number of young locals were recruited to help run the Carnival. The participants (of migrant and refugee background) decided to host a Futsal tournament for all members of the community. Specialised leadership training was provided at the Carlton Football Club, to assist them in organising the sporting event. This included a tour of the club’s facilities which provided inspiration to the group, particularly a young participant known as Ahmed.

‘It’s wonderful to see actually — this is the first tour I’ve done of any sport organisation,’ he said. ‘It’s good insight and makes you feel like you want to be a part of it’.

Two members of the leadership group were Shino Ismail and Liban Ayeh. Originally from Somalia, they are both talented football players in their own right.

‘We’ve come down to give the kids a day where they can just enjoy themselves and be free,’ said Ayeh. ‘We’re all from different backgrounds — here to help out and give something back to the community.’

Both young men, who harbour dreams of playing football professionally in Europe one day, arrived in Australia as young children.

‘I’ve done all my schooling here so I’m just as much an Aussie as everyone else really' said Ismail.

The importance of these partnerships and connections were highlighted recently in the ASC’s All Cultures webinar series. In his role as guest presenter James Demetriou, Sports Without Borders co-founder and Chair, discussed the diversity of Australia’s multicultural population and the opportunities for inclusion that sport can provide to those from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

The All Cultures three-part webinar series can be found on the Australian Sports Commission website http://www.ausport.gov.au/participating/webinars/previous_webinars

The Indigenous webinar series will commence on Thursday 12 July.