Psychosocial work

For some children and youth with psychosocial challenges, it takes a little extra to have a good experience with sports and become part of a positive community.

GAME’s psychosocial projects take, like GAME’s other work, its starting point in street sports and an empowerment approach. The goal is for children with psychosocial challenges to complete a street sports course that forms a network in a leisure activity, that helps them acquire social skills, improve their quality of life and positively affect schooling.

Parkour as a method

In GAME’s current project ‘Asphalt Meet-Up’, supported by the Danish Health Authorities, many of the children have previously had bad experiences in sports settings and GAME sees examples of children struggling with anxiety to such an extent that they had forgotten what their bodies could normally do such as climbing trees, jumping around, cycling or even just playing.

Especially parkour has been a successful activity in the ‘Asphalt Meet-Up’ project. Parkour as a form of sport is incredibly flexible and scalable, which means that everyone, regardless of level or physical shape, can participate in the same practice.

An evaluation carried out by VIVE – The National Research and Analysis Center for Welfare shows that up to 60% of the participants experience being more active, having greater motivation for participating in sports and to a greater extent being associated with sports associations after completing the course.

The participants also improve their social skills and sense of community. The figures show increased social strengths and a decrease in hyperactivity, and 78 % of the participants report that they feel part of a larger community.

Interns become role models

‘Asphalt Meet-Up’ also entails a peer-to-peer focused element. This means that GAME offers internships to young people who have experience with psychosocial challenges themselves and are interested in working with kids in the project as positive role models. The peer-to-peer element is focused on strengthening social competencies, experiencing being a role model and being part of a community as well as gaining a greater sense of joy by participating in sports or physical activity.