About us
We believe in a Switzerland where people with refugee background and locals form a solidarity-based community and meet one another with appreciation and on equal footing. That is why we actively work to promote equal opportunities in sport and health, using the power of sport to bring people with refugee background and locals together.
WHY WE ACT
SPORTEGRATION uses sport as a tool for much more than promoting physical activity: it creates conditions that enable people with refugee background and locals to meet, connect and exchange with one another. In doing so, we take into account the concrete realities that people with refugee background face in their everyday lives.
Traumatic experiences are often a reality for people with refugee background. Both the circumstances that force people to leave their home countries and the hardships of the journey itself can be severe. Yet traumatic experiences do not necessarily end once the journey is over: after arriving in Switzerland, people with refugee background are confronted with challenging living conditions shaped by a complex asylum process and an uncertain residence status. The reality is ongoing stress, uncertainty, social isolation and health inequalities.
These factors are further intensified by a gap in social support services within the migration sector. This is precisely where SPORTEGRATION comes in: through free and low-threshold sports programmes, we aim to help fill this gap and contribute to addressing this societal challenge.
Sport is far more than physical movement: it is a powerful tool for achieving key social goals, such as promoting health, strengthening the social participation of disadvantaged groups, and enabling intercultural exchange.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
HOW WE IMPACT
Sport Without Barriers
For sport to bring about social change, programmes must be tailored to the needs of the target group. This is where SPORTEGRATION comes in: while local sports clubs often face challenges in adapting their activities to the needs of people with refugee background, we deliberately design our programmes to take exactly these needs into account. Through free and low-threshold sports activities, we ensure that people with refugee background have access to sport and can benefit from its many positive effects.
At the same time, our activities are not limited to one specific target group. We show that neither specific language skills, educational background nor special abilities are required to take part. In this way, we create an open and welcoming environment where people with refugee background and locals can come together through sport.
From 2016 to Today
The idea of using free sports activities as a space for encounter and movement between people with refugee background and locals emerged in the summer of 2016. With a fitboxing training session at SiloSilo, the former Silo Löwenbräu in the city of Zurich, Annina Largo laid the foundation for SPORTEGRATION. The participants with refugee background were enthusiastic, and this led to the formal founding of the association in autumn 2016. Since then, a steadily growing and diverse range of sports activities has developed.
Since our founding, we have shown, and will continue to show, that in sport, everyone is equal. True to our motto: TOGETHER WE ARE BETTER!
OUR VALUES
OUR FUNDING PARTNERS
As a charitable non-profit organisation, we rely entirely on donations. We are able to carry out our work primarily thanks to the generous support of renowned foundations and public institutions, which together cover around 80% of our budget.
Equally important, however, are the many private donors and committed companies whose contributions account for the remaining 20% of our budget. Every contribution — whether large or small — helps us implement our projects and turn our vision into reality.
You can find out more about our funding partners under Partners.