Socio-sportive experience and informal education of children and young people: Contributions to the citizenship of new generations

Abstract

This presentation addresses the importance of socio-sports experiences, understood as an informal process of education in the construction of participatory citizenship of socially vulnerable children and young people. The study took place within the community of practices of a neighborhood, in Lisbon-Portugal. In fact, socio-sportive intervention can be configured as a space-time promoter of a multidimensional and empowerment vision of sustainable development of urban communities. It was through an on-site ethnographic observation study of the children's and youth experience in four informal sports activities - street football, capoeira, hip hop dance and the social circus - socially mediated by local community projects, that it was possible to identify collaborative practice models of collective construction of an integrative approach of informal education and sustainable social development, such as proximity social mediation, peer mentoring, popular education and collaborative action research. Informal models of education based on human rights, social justice and personal and social development, based on an ecosystem vision paradigm of urban development, through the expression of the children and youth trajectories and voices of the various community agents who collaborated in the course of research. The techniques used were participant observation, semi-directive and biographical interviews for tracing life trajectories and youth identities, life stories and also open interviews with project leaders. The premisse was that through sports it is possible to lead children and youth to educational attainment. The results let us perceive that, because it presupposes a setting of personal goals and the tentative to achieve them it implies persistence and continued work. Transferring these skills to the scholar domain, showed that their development in this area entails greater effectiveness in studying, making predict success in the future. It also implies the development of social relationship and teamwork skills. Combining informal education and sports is a rigorous, methodical, and holistic process, that takes the individual as a whole and as a multifaceted and complex being. The development of these competencies through informal educational methodologies assertively contributes, as was possible to see throughout this study, to the social inclusion to be done in a more sustained and consistent way.