BSV AL-Dersimspor e.V. - Women´s Intercultural Soccer
Location
Women from diverse cultural backgrounds, of different age groups and with varying soccer skills play soccer together and overcome multiple prejudices.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sport
Soccer
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2004
YouTube Upload
Project URL (include HTTP://)
http://www.bsv-aldersim.eu/frauen.html, for the planned re-match vs. Iran: http://www.rock-n-berlin.de/football
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram:
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Stereotyping that excludes
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Include through sport
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
This field has not been completed
Name Your Project
BSV AL-Dersimspor e.V. - Women´s Intercultural Soccer
Describe Your Idea
Women from diverse cultural backgrounds, of different age groups and with varying soccer skills play soccer together and overcome multiple prejudices.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Women from diverse cultural backgrounds, of different age groups and with varying soccer skills play soccer together and overcome multiple prejudices.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
Women´s soccer has seen a considerable boost in the last few years, but young female soccer enthusiasts are still facing prejudices - not only, but especially, when they´re from a muslim family background. While there had been soccer activities for women with Turkish roots before in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, none of these teams brought together women with and without a migratory background until we arrived. At Al-Dermispor, women from all kinds of backgrounds can play together in a team, no matter their ethnic origin or religious affiliation. We were able to scale our activities and organize a sensational match vs. the National Women´s Soccer Team of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Teheran in 2006, which directed international media attention to the issue of migrant and muslim women in sport and women in soccer in general. Although the re-match planned for 2007 could not take place due to last minute cancelation from Iran, we continue our work for an intercultural dialogue here.
What are the existing barriers, the biggest problem, your innovation is hoping to address/change?
Although there are people from many different cultural backgrounds in Berlin, they seem to live in parallel universes most of the time. Still, it is very unusual for Germans with and without a migratory background to cross these community lines and build real friendships on the other side. Playing soccer together helps our players to overcome the mutually existing stereotypes, but also demonstrates to the outside world that islamic women too can play soccer - with or without a headscarf.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
From humble beginnings, we have grown into a large and successful project. When a couple of female players met at the sidelines of a challenge and discovered how they were all dissatisfied with the current situation in women´s intercultural soccer, they decided to form a new women´s team. Berlin´s Al-Dersimspor, then an all-male club dominated by German-Turkish athletes, offered to take them on as a female division. Through athletic success and the enormous international response to the Iran game, we attracted new members in large number. Currently, our first team plays in Berlin's Premier League, the second team in the Berlin Amateur League.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
We are planning to open up a new girl´s division in spring 2008 as a possibility for girls aged 9 or 10 from different cultural backgrounds to discover soccer and take part in competitions at league level, even if they come from conservative families who would oppose their being athletes in another club. Despite the unfortunate cancelation of the re-match vs. the Iranian team last year, we are looking for ways to reach out beyond German borders and continue our intercultural work on an international level. Another step in that direction will be this season´s training camp in Turkey, coupled with a match against a Turkish women´s team. A fortunate outside financial support will allow all our athletes to take part regardless of their financial background.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
Women from all backgrounds should be free to exercise whatever sport they like and multicultural co-existence should be a matter of course.
What impact has your innovation had to date/or what is your intended impact? Exactly who are the beneficiaries?
First and foremost, we are a soccer team plain and simple. But through our presence in the public space of the Al-Dersimspor soccer field in Kreuzberg and the media coverage we were able to rouse through the Iran game and other activities, we have an impact on the multicultural life in Berlin. We open up a space in which stereotypes are questioned and new ways of dealing with each other can be explored. We have a direct impact on our players' lives by entering into a careful, yet dedicated contact with their families, that aims at balancing cultural sensibilities and stereotypes with our athletes' right to self-determination. Especially with younger players, that approach has made soccer available as a spare time activity - even against a very conservative family background. We are open to new players from all levels at all times , so that we can potentially reach out to large parts of the Kreuzberg community.
How many people have you served directly?
There are currently 30 women on our team.
How many people have you served indirectly?
It is through our intense media work, that we reach many Berliners. German and Turkish press outlets regularily cover our matches. For the re-match vs. Iran that got cancelled in the end, we had already sold more than 2,000 tickets and had roused an enormous press coverage around the globe. Within our division we are often confronted with various prejudices of the other teams. However, after games we often receive the feedback from opponent players that the strong team spirit and the fairplay of our team has contributed to change their perspective. This was underpinned by winning the Fairplay-prize of the BFV (Berlin Soccer Association) as well as of the DFB (German Soccer Federation) in 2006.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation?
Our match in Teheran has been made into a documentary movie that is running in this year´s Berlinale competition. Although the film maker is not related to our club, four of our athletes are part of the movie crew and help advertising it. We also take part in the "More than just guests" - exhibition on intercultural dialogue sponsored by the German Institute for Political Education. An artist friend of ours has held an art event based on the Iran match.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
Our project is on a strict volunteer basis, even for the coaches. Most of us are employed otherwise. We don´t have any financial stock available; down to every single photo copy we have to find sponsors or (more often) pay ourselves. For the Iran game, at least, we were able to find financial support from city officials and German government funding. The struggle for money to even keep us running is a constant hassle and eats up valuable time and energy.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
We charge a fee from all our athletes, but consciously keep it as low as possible so as not to exclude anyone. This covers for the bare minimum of our work e.g. the referees' fees. For all other activities, we are looking for sponsors. We are looking into ways to apply some of the strategies we used during the preparation of the Iran match to gather money from German Ministry of the Interior and the German Soccer Association.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization.
We are fully volunteer based and can only spend what we gain from our very low membership fees. International activities are an exception to this rule, however, but the sonspored money is used up entirely for conducting these projects.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Given the situation between Germans with a migratory background and those without it, and the increased ethnic and ideological frictions in Germany after September 11th 2001, the demand seems limitless. Berlin with its huge variety of ethnic groups is a hotspot of the current discussion on integration and peaceful coexistence in Germany, and our program has developed successful means to carefully win over even the more conservative muslims and battling German stereotypes about muslim women at the same time.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
We are looking for ways to translate the huge press interest we already gained into sponsorship and public funding. We will also forward the integration aspect more in our PR work and will actively approach Turkish and German communities about this. While our work abraod has been sponsored generously, we will have to find ways to promote our actual work in Berlin as equally, if not more important.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
In 2004, several women soccer players who were dissatisfied with other clubs met during a competition and decided to form their own women´s team. Luckily, with Mehtap Ardahanli and Safiye Kok, two seasoned players could soon be won as playing coaches, and the two of them were able to inspire the whole team right away. Right from the start, what was special about us was our idea of bringing together women from different cultural backgrounds, different age groups and varying levels of soccer skills in a single team. The idea of a match against the Iranian National team was born when two of our athletes won a place at a talent campus for their short film about said team, and there met with Iranian film maker Ayat Najafi . When they started discussing the situation of women players in Iran and learned that for example the Women´s National Team there had never been allowed to play under the open sky in their own country, they came up with the idea for the match and the collateral film.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
Silke: Until age 9 I enthusiastically played street-soccer, but because my parents insisted on a more "girly" sport, I dropped it, only to re-discover my enthusiasm in my mid-twenties. After years of active participation I am now Al-Dersimspor's press woman.
Mehtap: I started playing street-soccer with my brother at age 6, but was only allowed to join a team when I was 13. I have played in various Berlin-teams, the Berlin selection and the Turkish National Team and am now AL-Dersimspor’s playing coach.
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate? (this is confidential)
We were told about this by Jasper Nicolaisen from the University Challenge.
Affiliation (please list all that apply)
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Comments
Hi Silke,
good to see you on changemakers. It´s great how all the Berlin clubs and programs rally to this place :). You have seen Seitenwechsel´s Boxgirls Roadwork, I´m sure?
http://www.changemakers.net/node/2279
On intercultural work, there is also the St.Pauli Faninitiative from Hamburg, another cool project I like:
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/3622
Have fun here...and if you can find some footage of that documentary you mentioned, keep us posted.
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Hi Silke,
It's a pleasure to read about your great work with the Migrant Communities Female soccer Team and how far you've gone to forming a two team and establishing another one for 8-12 yares old all on volunteering capacity.
I am interested in your progress because I do run a male version of your project in Wellington, New Zealand for Refugee and Migrant communities and I entered the Nike changemaker competition (Link: http://changemakers.net/en-us/node/3820)
I'm just wondering if you would like to connect with me,as I will be happy to share views and brainstorm in order to pool resources for the sustainability of our projects.
My email address: soccertalent.co.nz@gmail.com
Regards.
Hi Adeyatol, hi Jasper,
thanks a lot for your comments on our project and the references to your own project, Adeyatol, and to Seitenwechsel as well as the St. Paulis', Jasper!
It's definately great to take part in this competition, if only for connecting with other similar projects all over the globe.
Adeyatol, we certainly like to get together with you and exchange experiences and ideas for new ways of extending our projects. Thanks for posting your contact - we'll get back to you on this.
Good luck with your own project in this competition!
Concerning the documentary, Jasper, we'll probably have it ready to be added in a few days time. Thanks for remembering!
All the best for now
Hey Silke,
I just saw that Boxgirls now has a theory of change statement.
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/2279#comment-3571
As I have written in regard to several projects here now, that topic is of special interest to me as the sociology guy that I am. Of course everybody claims to have an impact on young people´s lives, make them feel more self-confident, not just offer a pasttime, but also build character etc. (especially, when, like in this competition, it´s about winning money and fame). However, how exactly does that work? How does one bring about these changes in attitude/in society at large through sport? I often find there to be an explanation gap - compete successfully on the soccer field or beat someone in the ring - compete successfully in life, trust in that you can take up anybody? Not so simple. Do you think about these things? What are the underlying assumptions that inform your work? I´d be interested to learn.
Here´s some stuff you might find interesting:
Into to Theory of Change by the Aspen Institute
http://www.theoryofchange.org/
Extensive HowTo from the University of Arizona
http://www.publichealth.arizona.edu/chwtoolkit/PDFs/Logicmod/chapter3.pdf
And, to wit, we´re seeing the "Theory of change" primaries in the US right now :).
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_theory_of_change_primary
..which has prompted me to write a blog article directed at my lefty friends...
http://jasper.blogsport.de/2008/01/14/theorie-der-veraenderung-vs-veraen...
Lots of stuff, I know, but as I said, this is what has emerged as the most interesting topic for me around this whole changemaker/SFABW thing here, which as a person not engaged in social entrepreneurship or organized sports I find more and more fascinating. So... if you´d like to comment (here and/or over at Boxgirls), that´d be great :).
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Dear Jasper,
to be honest: Until we read your question we did not think a lot about our “theory of change”. But as a social scientist I was spontaneously fascinated about these things, so thank you for this inspiration – we just had some interesting discussions on it.
I had a look at the stuff you mentioned. But although I do not know that much about the so called “theory of change” the articles left me quite critical. I am not convinced, that “theory” is the right word for these concepts, especially the one of the Kellogg Foundation. In my opinion the stuff on the links is rather a description of management tools. Of course for some parts of our work a more target oriented way of planning could be helpful. But I am convinced that change of society cannot that easily be managed. I am a political scientist and therefore more or less familiar with the concepts of how to implement a political program. In the 60the and 70th the idea that a program will be successful, as long as there is a good plan and a good controlling-system might have been very popular. But today this optimistic view on steering processes is mainly out-dated and political science as a whole, and policy and implementation analysis in particular, take into account that society is much more complex. And I am very happy about this development.
Nowadays there are other ideas on planning and controlling in the management literature. These ideas are mainly oriented on things like profit and efficiency. And in my opinion adapting them uncritically for social projects would be another step of economizing “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt). By doing our football project we are not solely interested in economically defined efficiency.
So much on my scepticism on that. However, it is fascinating to think more about the underlying assumptions of our work – and there might be some interesting theoretical concepts to explain them. (to be continued below...)
... I am not able to carry out a full analysis on this – but I see this platform as a great opportunity to bring together ideas from various disciplines. I agree with you, Jasper, that sociology would be the first discipline to apply to all questions on how to change society. But for our work psychology and education could be helpful as well. Let me try to point out some rough ideas on how to use scientific concepts from these disciplines to explain and analyse the success of our work:
The main target of our project is to overcome cultural barriers. The underlying assumption is that the more we know each other and the more we live together the more we will be able to overcome these barriers. Some arguments for these assumptions can be found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. He explains why the separation of social classes is stable and hard to dissolve: In our social practice we reproduce the typical behaviour of our social group which is mainly based on imitation without rational decisions. Getting to know people from different cultures and different social classes gives us the ability to reflect on our own behaviour and to get a deeper understanding of the “others”. This idea is supported by some empirical findings: It has been shown for instance, that in some regions with a very low migration-rate there is an increased degree of aggression against foreigners. (to be continued below...)
... By searching for ideas of change in other disciplines I came across the psychological idea about the paradox of change in therapy: “change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not”. This, I think, is also the idea of our work. We all have different personalities and we are not interested in changing this – or each other. Instead we want to create a space and atmosphere which enables the players on the team to develop their own individual personalities.
This is just one idea we found promising while reflecting on a theory of change for our project. But of course there are tons of other ideas to be considered. By studying concepts of communication theory, for instance, we could get an idea about the reception of our media work. Concepts of social and individual learning could be helpful to analyse changes inside and outside of our group as well.
In order to develop a real “theory of change”– a theory which is more than a manual of how to be efficient – there is obviously a lot more work to be done. I think it would be great to continue this discourse. And the context of this worldwide competition seems to be a great starting point. And who knows – there might even be some scientists on this forum interested in carrying out a little research-project on it? (Perhaps with a little help of the sponsors of this competition?) If so, we would be more than happy to welcome you in Berlin for analysing our project as an empirical example of a certain “theory of change”.
Wow, Japer, see what you started: more 800 words. Sorry, if this is more than you wanted. But as you can see, we got inspired. Now we are interested to know what you, and of course everybody else, think about it.
Silke
Hi Silke,
wow, thanks for your effort! This is great and actually exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for. I think what you did with looking at other disciplines apart from business planning is a good contribution "we" humanities people can bring to this. It is important to listen to the business people and learn from them as regards planning and efficiency, but especially for "social entrepreneurs", as they are called around here, thinking about the "social" bit is as important. CM is indeed a good starting place for making one´s mind up about these things, like: Who are we as an organization? What do we want to do and how? How can we be efficient (financially, organizationwise) and work for our clients/ourselves - and how do these two levels connect? Looking at all the projects around here and talking to some I wanted to be part of this and who ended up not coming here, I get the impression that many seem to think that it´s enough if they "kind of" know what they want to do and how. But what really helps is to put it into words, into writing and come up with ideas and measures to get there. It seems like an exercise that is almost too easy, so many people skip it all together, but actually a theory of change (and thinking about what that could mean for you in the first place) is a terribly important guidance tool for any organization. I agree wholheartedly that I does not have to be "only about money" at all, though money will probably always be part of it for practical reasons. I´m all for continuing this fascinating discussion and I love the idea of making Al-Dersimspor a little model case. Actually, I might be interested in researching you (ha!) Let´s think about a good way of doing this, even if this competition ends.
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
(continued)
Heather Cameron from Boxgirls Berlin will start a research project on Social Entrepreneurs and self-evaluation this summer at the FU. We could think about being part of this, somehow, maybe she´s up for it. I think you and I (and maybe Frieda, whom I also know) bring good expertise on sociology/philosophy/psychology - questioning the material on Theory of Change out there from that perspective would be endlessley fascinating for me (and of course the other way ´round: approaching what´s there in sociology etc. with a kind of MBA mindset). Let´s collect some ideas here, so that others may benefit, too, and then work from there once this competition is over. Hey, it was worth coming here for this conversation alone :).
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Dear Jasper, dear all,
hey Jasper – thank you so much for your enthusiastic response! Yes, we definitely should continue this discussion even after this competition will have been finished. As you know we have some social scientists within our team and we are open to everyone interested in this debate. Unfortunately we have not had that many capacities to contact a lot of participants in this competition, but probably you have had the opportunity to get to know some persons interested either from Germany or from other countries? We are looking forward to a meeting with Heather Cameron and probably we can start a little project on how to develop a theory of change.
During the last week we all spent a lot of time at the Berlinale. On Sunday, 10th of February, there was the premiere of the film about our football game in Teheran. It was a fantastic evening!! The name of the film is “Football under Cover” and we all are so happy about it. The resonance of the audience was great. On Thursday the film won two awards during the celebration of “Teddy-Award”. We all were invited to the celebration and it was another wonderful evening.
The main statement of the film is: Change is possible! Therefore we really hope that many many people will see the film (in cinema from 10th of April 2008)!
All the best for all participants!
Silke
Hi Silke,
dudette, why do I only see this now!? Congratulations, I´m so happy for you guys! People, they won the award for best documentary and the Volkswagen audience award, too! I guess you then aren´t too sad about not making it to the finals here ;). However, I´m happy to hear that you are as much interested in continuing our debate here than I am. Let´s get together with Heather Cameron and her research project soon - I also hear that there are more web based changemaker community things coming up, to keep this community going. I´m sure we´ll find ways to push what´s interesting to us there. Also, I heartily invite you to our brand new studivz group for bg roadwork...if you have something similar up, I´m happy to join you. Find us at:
http://www.studivz.net/Groups/Overview/1a1f6d2559b1bf1d
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge