Ms Amina Moustafa:

Speaking about Northern Ireland, there is a great sports club up there called PeacePlayers Northern Ireland that promotes an ethos similar to the one that we live through our programme. It has the motto that kids who can play together can learn to live together. It involves bringing together communities and learning about each other through sport. One of the powerful things about sport is that it is a universal language. Oftentimes sport is seen as apolitical and as one of those safe topics you can speak about over the dinner table. This is important, particularly when you are talking about issues that are quite sensitive to people. From my experience, when I was heavily involved in the Hijabs & Hat-Tricks programme, a lot of the players who were on that programme had experienced racism and discrimination in other aspects of their lives, whether that be through education or employment. It was by playing sport and building relationships that trust was built among the players and that created a space where they could talk about racism and discrimination outside of the sport setting. That was done in a way that was not intimidating or that made them feel like they had to bring up personal lived experience, but it was done after building a relationship up based off trust, we can start to have these conversations. That example of coming together and playing in an informal way is the beginning of bridging gaps and divides between communities.