Living up to our Principles: Social Innovation is a Collective Sport

[Regional Partnerships] Creating change and having a genuine impact on people’s lives is no small thing to achieve. This is why one of the core principles of PLAY’s work is a recognition that in order to make a real difference, we need to work as a collective. Joining our efforts to the work of others in effective partnerships is therefore one of the most important things we can do to create sustainable solutions to society’s challenges.

 

PLAY's 20th anniversary in 2019 was an opportunity to reflect on the past and the future

In 2019, PLAY celebrated its 20th anniversary. In Kosovo, this gave us a chance to both reflect on our achievements and look towards the future and how our work can have even more impact. One of the results of this was a determination to build new, long-term partnerships around the Western Balkans. These partnerships will not be based on implementing a single, donor-funded project, but long-term collaborations to bring sustainability and sustained energy to common initiatives in the region. The network will open new possibilities for exchange and learning and give PLAY – as an international reference for social innovation through sport – the chance to share the fruits of its experience working with multi-ethnic youth in Kosovo and around the world.

5 staff members from PLAY and 5 from TAKT met up in the North Macedonian town of Berovo

Despite the disruption and difficulty that the COVID19 pandemic has brought, 2020 has seen the first steps in building this new network. We are very proud therefore to have begun a new, strategic partnership with Together Advancing Common Trust (TAKT) – a women-led sport for development organisation in North Macedonia whose aims are to harness the power of sport to promote inclusion, reconciliation and peacebuilding. And thanks to support from the Embassies of France in Pristina and Skopje, our teams were able to spend a first weekend together at the beginning of October sharing pedagogical approaches, understanding each other’s work and building a new sense of collective.

The workshop was a chance to learn and share new ideas for both teams

With a structured and long-term commitment in place that is independent of any particular funded project, our two organisations can work more effectively as a collective to find new opportunities, bring in new partners from other Western Balkan countries and most importantly, be more effective in creating sustainable solutions to the region’s social challenges.