Stadtwerke Gießen's "Spiel' Dein Spiel" campaign supports clubs and institutions that are involved in youth sporting activities. TSV Klein-Linden is one of them. The club offers children from the age of four the opportunity to play football under expert guidance.Football ID is a special inclusion programme for people with intellectual disabilities.
It's always funny to watch girls and boys of kindergarten age playing football: They all gather in a bunch and run after the ball. Planned actions - such as passes - are rare, but the kids have fun and are fully committed to the game. At this level, Germany's number one sport is still a real game and not the serious competition that is common even among less ambitious amateur teams.
Of course, even four and five-year-olds prefer winning to losing. That's why the 25 minis from TSV Klein-Linden train regularly with their coach Max Fricke. After all, they want to be successful in their Bambini Fair Play League tournaments. Of course, they need jerseys for these games. And they cost money. For a club that has 15 teams across all genders in its football department alone, the purchase of 25 jerseys is relatively difficult to manage. Especially in the children's section, it is not easy to find the necessary funds. This is because there are still very few sponsors interested in this segment.
Gerhard Kerzmann, a member of the TSV board, recognised the opportunity offered by "Spiel' Dein Spiel". Without further ado, he and the club's G-Youth team applied to the popular youth sponsorship programme run by Stadtwerke Gießen (SWG). With success: "We think it's really worth supporting that TSV Klein-Linden is already taking care of the very young footballers," explains Stephanie Orlik, who is responsible for sponsorship at SWG.
More than good youth work
TSV Klein-Linden also takes on another important task: specially trained coaches take care of the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities at the football ID. "Football is a particularly suitable sport for this," says Gerhard Kerzmann. "We would also like to honour this extraordinary commitment of the club with our support," explained Stephanie Orlik on the occasion of the handover of the 25 children's jerseys.
Further information:
www.swg-spieldeinspiel.de