I am a Football Coach and I have worked in many sport clubs and amateur football associations. Last year, while working in an amateur local football association and I was training teams of children aged between 10-15 years old, I experienced incidents of racism among the children of one of the teams.

This amateur local football association is a located in a quite small town, however the town is inhabited by many immigrants as it is mostly a rural area with huge areas of crops where they are usually employed. So, every year, a lot of children with migration background are enrolled in the association and take part in the training sessions.
Last year, in one of the teams which I was coaching, one kid with migration background was enrolled in the middle of the year and was the only new member.

In the beginning, everything seemed to be going well, all the kids were hanging together both during the workouts and the matches and after, they were cooperating and they were also having fun. Unfortunately, at some point, I noticed that this had stopped and on the contrary the kid with the migration background was isolated, was sitting alone and during the workout the other kids were unpleasant comments, targeting his background and origin.

Firstly, as a human being but also as a football coach, who should be fair, give equal opportunities and promote cooperation, teamwork and fair play, I decided to intervene. So at first place, I arranged a meeting with all the parents of the kids and in cooperation with other coaches from the association we conducted speeches and a general talk, including parents’ opinions and thoughts, about the learning values that someone can acquire through sports, but also about deviant behaviors among kids and how they can be managed. The group meeting was followed by individual meetings with the parents of the kids who presented aggressive behavior, but also with the parents of the child that was isolated. Unfortunately, no one of the parents had realized what was going on, but they were definitely committed to begin open and ongoing conversations with their children about differences, diversity and discrimination, as we proposed.

In the beginning, I was very disappointed as these discriminatory incidents and the isolation of the child were escalating and I felt that I was not prepared or trained to handle a situation like that, but I was feeling that I had to solve this problem. So I started researching on the web, reading studies and ways approaching those kind of situations, as well as practices in order not also to stop the incidents but to prevent future cases.
The most difficult part was at the beginning of this situation, when I understood what was going on and I was feeling unable to help the child and solve the problem.

Fortunately, all parents willingly cooperated with us and week by week the situation got a lot better until everything went back to normal. All the kids were hanging together during the workouts, the matches and after, they were cooperating and they were also having fun.
After this experience, I strongly believe that discussing discrimination and facing such situations can be hard enough even for adults. Talking to kids about the subject can be especially challenging, however diversity and discrimination are subjects that shouldn’t be ignored. Parents but also coaches and teachers are playing a very important and critical role both in facing and preventing discrimination that is why they should often talk to kids about the evils of prejudice and discrimination and the value of diversity.

I am a physical education teacher and I have been working at the same school for the last 16 years. A lot of children with a migrant background have been enrolled in our school the last years and we had never experienced discrimination cases till 2 years ago. Before having this interview, I had never thought of the incident I am going to describe, that way, but now that we are talking I believe that it could be strongly related with radicalisation process.

The incident concerns a former student of mine and more specifically a young girl with migrant background, aged 13 years old. She was an excellent student, with consistency, always smiling, very kind and shy and a willing girl who was always trying to help her classmates and always cooperating with everyone.
Apparently, a lot of incidents had probably happened but she had never told anything to anyone, neither to her school teachers, nor to her parents. One day, it was too rainy to do outdoor sport activities so I decided to have a theoretical session with the students about sports played in ancient times. When we reached the classroom, I remembered that I had forgotten to bring the projector, so I kindly requested from the children to stay quiet in the classroom, until I come back with the projector and continue our theoretical session.

When I was reaching the classroom, I heard through the half-opened door a group of kids screaming nicknames and a lot of unpleasant comments, all targeting the girl and especially her origin and her skin color. The girl was not talking and not responding back to any of the comments. I couldn’t stand anymore to hear these things, so I opened the door and entered the classroom, I looked the girl and she seemed quiet and a bit sad. I started talking about this with the kids and I asked them to explain to me the reason of all these comments and behavior. After that we had a long talk with the kids about values such as diversity, tolerance and respect.

It’s strange but somehow, I decided from that day and especially after this conversation, to watch this class and the behavior of this group of children towards the girl and see if the comments and the maltreatment will go on.
Unfortunately my fears came true. The situation kept going on, so I decided to do something about it.
I had a meeting with all the school teachers and the headmaster, where I described the incidents and I explained to them the situation and the isolation of the girl. We decided to work with the children with some classroom activities and interactive games focusing on exploring prejudices, stereotypes, racism, exclusion, equality and diversity with the aim to fight the phenomenon. Furthermore, the headmaster arranged a meeting with parents in order to provide information but also to offer advice on the topic. Unfortunately very few parents showed up and attended the meeting. In the meantime, during my lesson with this class, I formed an amateur basketball team including all the girls where I was coaching girls’ basketball. Since then and every time during my class, the girls were practicing basketball and playing mini tournaments.

Personally, I felt unskilled and unable to manage the situation. Despite the fact that during my studies I had also attended courses in pedagogy nothing had prepared me for dealing with such issues. Thankfully, I had the support both of the rest of the school teachers and of the school principal who payed attention to the case and were immediately engaged in facing the problem. Sadly, I did not have the support I expected from the parents. The most difficult parts were the indifference of the parents and the fact that I was witnessing the maltreatment of the girl and the change in her behavior, withdrawing into herself and isolated from the other students.

The girl with the migrant background was proved to be a great and talented basketball player and this was something that the rest of her classmates noticed and started respecting and admiring. Gradually, things became normal over time and the girl had the best relationship with her classmates. This incident made me experience in practice that sport has the power to break down barriers and unite people.

I am coming from Pakistan and I legally entered Greece and reside for almost 6 years. Since then I am employed as a worker in farms and crops. I am living in a very small village where we all know each other and the majority of the inhabitants is Greek and has been born here. Especially in the beginning of my stay, I faced and experienced lots of racist incidents and exclusion due to my nationality and skin color and because I was not born in this region and I could not speak the language.

During the first period of my stay, I was living alone here and I had only my job and some friends that I made at work, who are also coming from other countries.
The village has very few things-activities to do at your spare time and only a few places to visit such as recreational facilities. I had plenty of free time after work, so I decided to enroll in a sports club where adults but also children learn how to play amateur football and which organizes amateur tournaments. They placed me in one of the adult teams and I started practicing with the support and guidance of an experienced football coach. Our coach was treating every player, including me, with respect and equally and fairly, however, I was not treated the same by my teammates. All my teammates were behaving formally towards me, especially when the coach was present and when he was absent, most often, they were not even talking to me. During and after break time, the trainings and the tournaments they were always hanging all together but never with me and they were obviously ignoring and avoiding me. Despite the fact that according to our coach I was very good and hardworking football player, they were having a hard time to accept it and cooperate with me. I did not want either to push forward the issue to our coach or to try to approach them and settle things with them.

I felt that I was completely in the wrong place in the world and different from other people, not accepted as I am. I started having questions about myself, about the other people, my teammates, the society. I felt that I was not a member neither of this team, nor of this society. So I was desperately starting seeking to meet people who will have the same thoughts, beliefs and questions. During this period, I just happened to meet the friends of one of the guys I used to work with and we started hanging out and spend our free time together. As time passed, we were having in-depth conversations where I realized that we were sharing the same thoughts, beliefs and feelings. I started feeling that I belong somewhere and that there were people who understand me. They were having and expressing extreme beliefs, thoughts and ideas and they presenting an aggressive behavior towards the rest of the people and society. At some point I also realized that things were going a little weird, so I started discreetly to avoid hanging and going out with them.
Back then I did not exactly realize what was going on and I was just thinking that eventually we were not matching, but now that you explained to me about radicalisation and we are doing this interview, I realize that I was entering the process of radicalisation and how much more they were. I have no experience or knowledge on the topic of radicalisation.

I just stopped hanging out with them when I realized that something was going wrong. I don’t know if this was the proper thing to do, or if I should have talked to someone about it. I did not involve anyone else, not even the guy who introduced me to them and with whom I was working with.

I just stopped hanging out with them when I realized that something was going wrong. I don’t know if this was the proper thing to do, or if I should have talked to someone about When I realized that something was going wrong with that group, I did not know what exactly to do. The only solution I had was to start discreetly avoiding them without commenting on their attitude and beliefs, as I was afraid of them and their aggressive behavior. The most difficult part was that I was afraid that they were going to harm me because I left their group.

I learned a lesson from this experience and I realized that everyone should think clearly and rationally and don’t get influenced by anyone. Now I know how to get the others’ respect and I regret that I was involved in that group and situation.

I will share with you one bad experience as I want my voice to be heard and maybe help other girls who may be in my shoes. The story, I am going to narrate, happened 3 years ago, when I was 16 years old and in the 1^st class of High School. Today that I have become more mature, I consider that I started following the pathway to radicalisation.

My grandmother is the one who raised me and my brother since I had never met my father and I have no information on him and when I was 8 years old and my brother 10 years old, our mother abandoned us and got married to someone, who we had seen only once just before she left us. Both me and my brother we were hurt and we are still hurting by our mother’s abandonment but thankfully our grandmother, this lovely, admirable and caring woman, is the biggest blessing in our life, she has been both the best mother and father to us. Unfortunately, she is quite old and she is just receiving her pension. Especially, when me and my brother were younger and still at school and we could not work, we barely had enough money for our basic needs.
As far as I am concerned, I have always been an active and restless youngster, always trying to understand and help others and contribute to my school community and to the society in general. I am humble, honest, and shy, but not always low-profile and I adore truth and justice.
It all started 3 years ago, when I was at the age of 16 years old. During a gym class, our physical education teacher proposed to all of the girls of my classroom to form 2 teams and play volleyball. Our teacher explained to all of us the basic volleyball rules and terminology and we got started. That day I had the best experience in my life, as I enjoyed very much playing with my classmates with whom I had always the best relationship and I understood how much I loved to play volleyball. In the meantime, I knew that in our school we were having a high school girls’ volleyball team, which was composed by schoolgirls of all of the three grades of high school. Therefore I decided that since I love and enjoy so much playing volleyball, I should talk with our physical education teacher and do whatever it takes to join the team.
Our physical education teacher talked to me quite strict and negatively and seemed that she did not want me to join the volleyball team, something that still today I cannot understand and justify. She approved my participation in the team with great difficulty, while the rest of the girls on the team were extremely opposed to my introduction to the team. The first day of my appearance in the team, the majority of the girls instead of welcoming me, indicated their dissatisfaction by grimacing and demonstrated their upset. In short, from the very first moment, they were keep making insulting comments about my economic, social and family background, talking in front of me loudly and with emphasis about how warm family they have and how much they were loved by their parents and the gifts that they were buying to them and how they are spending their free time and weekends with their parents.
As a consequence, I felt sad and that I was treated unfairly, I got too angry both with my teammates and with the physical education teacher who was training us and was watching what was going on without any intention of interfering and putting them in their place and in the meantime I quit the team. There was no effort neither from my teammates nor from our teacher to bring me back to the team. That made me even angrier.
Thereafter, I was very frustrated and I had convinced myself that I have to take justice into my own hands. I started searching on the web and the more I was reading, more passionate I was becoming. At one point, I actually though that it would be better if I also find some other young people, with similar experiences, that are willing to administer our own form of justice. So, I started searching in forums, where different people were expressing their opinions, beliefs and life experiences and I was chatting and aiming to meet face-to-face with whoever was matching this profile.

Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved? Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?

Lucky for me, my brother who was 2 years older than me and always very mature, had noticed all the change in my behavior and had his eyes on me, so one day he sat down and discussed with me. I told him everything; I described every single incident with great detail, as well as the behavior of my teammates and the attitude of our teacher. I also expressed to him my beliefs and that from now on I had to deliver justice since our teacher was not reacting. My brother advised me and made me see that this was not the right way to handle and control things. At the same time, as he was too worried about me, he also informed our grandmother about the situation, because as our guardian she should also acknowledge the facts. That period, my brother was constantly around me, hanging out and spending lots of free time with me, in order to make sure that I have left all these behind and I was thinking straight. If it weren’t him, things would have gone and ended pretty badly, since usually anger urges to harm others or ourselves.
Today I am studying at University and in the meantime I am working and I have started thinking of finding and joining an amateur team and playing again volleyball, which I love so much. After all these I have learned that all people sometimes may be treated unfairly and get disappointed and maybe frustrated and sad but this doesn’t mean that we have to overcome this situation in this way. There are many ways to cope with such issues without the use of violence and unwanted means.

Unfortunately 2 years ago I experienced a situation of radicalisation of a young boy, a student of mine.

Our town is a rural area with many crops and cultivations, inhabited also by many immigrants who are residing here with their families legally and permanently and are working in the farms. Accordingly, their children attend school regularly. In the high school that I was teaching 2 years ago we had many students with a migrant background and we had never faced any racist incident before.
During my class, I was usually coaching the boys’ football and the girls’ basketball. At the start of the school year I hadn’t faced any problem or racist incident. However, during the middle of the school year I noticed that during the football matches, one of my students and more particular a young boy was having a quite aggressive behavior towards to all his classmates who happened to have a migrant background. He was making fun of them, using nasty expressions and insults, making offensive comments, using verbal violence, sometimes followed by bad gestures and physical violence. The comments included expressions like “You are inferior”, “You are a threat to the Greek nationality” and many other. Many of the rest of my students – his classmates came to me and said that he keeps attacking the children and repeating those words during school breaks and after school and that he is also talking to his friends about far right political parties and their ideology.
I have limited experience on the topic of radicalisation but based on my overall experience as a teacher, I can say that in this specific case, parents had influenced the radicalisation process of this young boy.

Every time that such comments or unacceptable behavior were brought to my attention I was disapproving his attitude, scolding him and maintaining order. But this wasn’t enough. Many times I was inviting him to talk privately, where I was trying to explain many things to him, including issues such as violence, diversity, unacceptable behavior and other related topics. Despite my efforts, he continued misbehaving and causing trouble when I was not present. In the meantime, I had already informed all the teaching staff of the school as well as the principal about the incidents and the child’s behavior.
I didn’t give up; I continued trying to cope with the situation. The next step was to call his parents and discuss with them, as the situation was turning more serious. His parents never showed up in our meeting and when they were coming to school, either to pick up their child, or to get informed and receive his grades, we were trying to talk with them but they were always avoiding us by pretending that they are in a rush and that they have got some unfinished business to take care of.

No, I didn’t and I don’t have the skills to cope with this kind of situation and I believe that this was and still is the most difficult part. I still fill that I didn’t achieve anything. I couldn’t manage to alter his behavior. I had the support of the principal and of the teaching community but this proved to be inadequate.

This situation had not been improved until the end of the school year and during the period that I was teaching there. The next year I was transferred to a new school. I strongly believe that we also needed the support of his parents and of course of a specialist, as none of us were qualified to cope with something like that.