ERAMSUS+ Integration of Refugees Through Sport (IRTS)

Head of Project
Dr. Karen Petry 

Project Staff
Sally-Ann Jennifer Fischer
Alana Richardson
Kaija Ruck
Laura van Zantvoort

Research Period
Januar 2024 - Dezember 2025

Partners

  • ISCA (International, Denmark)
  • Sportanddev (hosted by ISCA)
  • UNHCR, regional bureau of Europe
  • Scort Foundation (Switzerland)
  • Laureus Sport for Good Foundation (UK)
  • Beyond Sport (UK)
  • PLAY International (France)
  • ISA (Netherlands)
  • GAME (Denmark)
  • Glasswing International (El Salvador)
  • Fundación Grandes Valores, Fútbol Más Foundation (Chile)
  • Common Goal (Germany)
  • German Sport University (Germany)
  • Center for Advanced Migration Studies (Denmark)
  • Save the Children Sweden (Sweden)
  • Terre des Hommes Romania (Romania)
  • Support Group Network (SGN) (Sweden)
  • Ukraine Active (Ukraine)
  • V4Sport (Poland)
  • Social Innovation Sports Hub (SISH) (Portugal)
  • Center for Healing and Justice in Sport (USA)
  • Compensar (Colombia)
  • DGI (Denmark)

Global project website:
https://irts.isca.org/globalirts

Project Description
Integration of Refugees Through Sport (IRTS) is a growing eco-system and community of stakeholders that has evolved significantly over the last decade. Sport and play have been used for relief and integration for refugees for much longer, but there is a growing volume of initiatives, methodologies and stakeholders that are engaging in this field. The Erasmus+ project “Convening Global Integration of Refugees Through Sport Sector” addresses the dire inclusion challenge of refugee children and adults by strengthening the evidence base, raising awareness, advocating, and building capacities of stakeholders in the sector.

From its starting point in Europe, the IRTS project brings together a very large and strong group of partners and stakeholders from all over the world, including institutions, funding bodies, global networks, humanitarian organisations, and sporting bodies. The end result is a project consortium that is very comprehensive in nature, with complementary roles and global representation.

The overall objective of the project is to convene the global IRTS community and strengthen its evidence-base, credibility, capacity and voice. The ultimate target group is the refugees themselves, as diverse as this group is acknowledged to be. Linked to this is of course their peer citizens in the host communities (if they are not in refugee camps) that will benefit from stronger inclusion efforts through more cohesive communities. This target group, however, is only reached indirectly in the project.

The direct target groups are:

  • Practitioners - organisations delivering IRTS activities on the ground (sport, humanitarian, social, and local authorities)
  • International networks of IRTS and related civil society organisations
  • Decision-makers and funders of relevance to the IRTS sector, including media
  • Wider European and international public

The IRTS project enables mutual learning, inspiration and capacity building, ultimately benefitting all involved partners in the unique opportunity of global EU funded projects of this scale. In this way, the project will promote the IRTS agenda globally, while also learning from the valuable experiences from other parts of the world.