A sporting and social intervention from 15.7 million euros to affirm that sport is everyone’s right and it is necessary to promote it as a correct lifestyle in the most difficult contexts and disadvantaged areas of the country.
Sport and Health (which was called Coni Servizi until 2018) is a public company headed by the Ministry of Economy that deals with the development of sport. With this announcement it aims to involve the Municipalities and 12,000 third sector entities in the sports sector to support their projects that aim to break down the barriers to accessing sport, promoting inclusion and integration. With “Sport for all”, Sport and Health, together with the Minister for Sport and Youth, he aims to create an integrated plan of social support measures which will involve 1,070,000 citizens. This intervention includes the following projects: “Neighbourhoods” to foster the educational alliance between the sports system and the Third Sector thanks to facilities at the service of the communities; “Inclusion” which leverages sport as a tool for preventing social and psychophysical discomfort; “Carceri” which provides an opportunity for re-education to prisoners through the enhancement of sports activities in prisons for adults and minors in collaboration with the Department of Penitentiary Administration and the Department of Juvenile and Community Justice; and “Parks” born from the collaboration with the National Association of Italian Municipalities – Anci with the aim of creating new equipped sports areas within public municipal parks or beaches.
«Bringing sport to squares, prisons and at the service of people with disabilities is what the CSI has been doing since its foundation in 1944. It is undeniable that it is important, emerging from the pandemic, that the government put a lot of money into projects that meet to the needs of this time. Many kids have stopped playing sports in the last few years two years staying indoors and they are struggling to get back to practicing it. Also because the pool or the field are often far from home. Therefore it is essential that with these funds a network is created between the public and the third sector, and that we work together to improve existing structures and projects to involve young people», explains the president of the CSI, Vittorio Bosio. Who adds: «Today we often collide with reality: to make plans you need ideas, people and funds. Now these funds are about to arrive, the hope of Csi which is that they will not rain, but will go to support the many volunteers of the organizations of the basic commercial of the Third sector who already know how to work with and for children, people with disabilities or whoever he is in prison putting his heart and arms into it. The beauty of this mission is that the greatest medal we win is the one we put around our necks all together, cultivating passion in sport in the boys, friendship with teammates and teammates and physical and mental well-being».
«An aspect that I find interesting and convincing about this “Sport for all” project is the desire to have social institutions work with the Municipalities, large and small, for the usability of public spaces in a sporting key. In the suburbs of cities and in small provincial towns from The pandemic has left team sport weakened and individual sport strengthened, outdoors and done free body. The hope is that it will be possible to work with these funds on the maintenance of public parks by inserting specific spaces for sporting practice with elements of guidance for the good practice of exercises. Social sport doesn’t work because it’s called that; it only works if you practice it with your heart, as we have always done, with projects and activities of true social action», concludes Bosio.