It’s workshop day!
After a quick breakfast, Pinar, Elliot, Benni and Jenny headed to the workshop location Hope Alcazar, a very historical building and former movie theatre which is now used for all kinds of events. We had a very adventurous taxi ride through the narrow and steep streets of Istanbul to the event location.
The over 1000 signatures on The Ball seem to weigh heavy. At the event location, we met Yuvam Dünya again and had some time to discuss our match plan, check out the place and get ready for the participants to arrive. In addition to our partners from FES and Yuvam Dünya, 13 participants attended the workshop.
The workshop started with a quick interactive energizer and the presentation of 4 organisations: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Yuvam Dünya, Football for Future and Spirit of Football. Tackling climate change, like winning a football match, requires a team effort, therefore we build on working with partners everywhere we go. Especially Yuvam Dünya, a Turkish association which seeks to take on the climate crisis through social transformation bringing together leaders of leading companies, artists, activists, non-governmental volunteers and scientists, does know much more about how climate change impacts Turkey. So they led on the climate part during the presentation and supported us with their expertise throughout the workshop session.
The aim of the workshop is getting the participants to talk. So next on the plan was a Speed Dating session. Participants were asked to discuss their opinion on football, their most emotional football moment as well as what environmental changes they have experienced in their local setting. Another part of our workshop to set the scene is “It’s game day”. Here we look very closely on our habits linked to our match day: what do we wear, how do we travel to games, what do we consume, what rituals do we have and how do we inform ourselves on that day. We want to see to what degree our experiences are similar, how do they differ, what impact does our match day experience have on the environment but also how does the environment impact our match day experience.
We look very closely at our habits linked to our match day: what do we wear, how do we travel to games, what do we consume, what rituals do we have and how do we inform ourselves on that day. We want to see to what degree our experiences are similar, how do they differ, what impact does our match day experience have on the environment but also how does the environment impact our match day experience. We then introduced our partner Pledgeball and, with the help of our so-called Pledgecards talked about environmentally friendly behaviours in small groups realizing that we are already doing things but also face different challenges when trying to establish a more pro-environmental lifestyle. One aim of this journey is to make environmentally friendly behaviours and actions that are taking place all across the world visible. As a homework we asked people to think about one or several actions that they want to take which, together, we wanted to register digitally the next day.
Over the rooftops of Istanbul we had a FairPlay football session to finish off the first day with lots of good vibes, laughter, good music and motivated people. We also added some climate variations to combine moving and thinking and finished the day off with a small reception where also other people joined including Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Cihan who, together with Pinar, had alreaded previously welcomed the Spirit team to Istanbul back in 2018.
