MOVE Annual Report Year IV 1st July 2010 to 30th June 2011

After three effective years of implementation, the MOVE project and the Movement, Games and Sport methodology (MGS) used in it, have clearly helped Terre des hommes’ global action for vulnerable children mostly, who have been victims of physical and emotional abuse, neglect, labour exploitation, and living under poor social, economic and family conditions. Not only thanks to the effect the activities have on children, but also thanks to the message events such as Fair play Football convey, highlighting the importance of the vulnerable children’s right to play, amongst other child rights.

Thanks to the adult training sessions, more and more children have benefited from games and sport activities with a psychosocial aim in various rural communities in Albania, Romania and Moldova, and now as well in the extremely poor region of Transnistria. The methodology also teaches adults to recognise a child in a vulnerable situation and the MOVE activities are now therefore also a means to identify them.

Results on children are the following: they find themselves more integrated in their neighbourhood; they have increased their self-confidence; there is less aggressiveness and violence among them and more cooperation with each other. MGS has also proved to decrease the percentage of children with dysfunctional behaviour.

Official education institutions are now convinced of the benefits of the MOVE project and a serious accreditation process of the MGS methodology is ongoing in the three countries. This, added to the fact that today approximately 500 animators are actively involved in the MOVE project, gives us solid grounds to believe in the sustainability of the project.

In terms of advocacy and communication, Tdh promotes MOVE through a new Goodwill Ambassador: Serghei Chirilov, Head coach of U-21 National Football Team of Moldova, a UEFA license holder of “A” class coaching. The MOVE team has regular contact with the Football federations in Albania and Moldova. Various other important steps have also taken place, such as the *shooting of a dynamic 5-min promotion video on the MGS methodology which will be used as an advocacy tool in the future.

An institutional learning process in Moldova showed interesting results with enthusiastic testimonies from journalists, teachers, parents and children. An institutional learning video is currently being produced in the three countries, and will be issued after the summer.