Whilst Kick It Out's One Game, One Community weeks of action were taking place across England, The FARE Action Week united supporters, clubs and those targeted by racism across the continent in a concerted effort to make discrimination a thing of the past.
The Action Week of the Football Against Racism in Europe network aims to boost public awareness of the problems of racism and exclusion and to create a united front in dealing with this malign influence on Europe‘s number one sport.
The idea behind the FARE Action Week is that a wide range of initiatives and activities address local problems within their club or community, while also joining groups across the continent to present a unified stand against racism in the game.
What started as a minor campaign in nine countries in 2001 has now become the largest series of anti-racism activities in sport ever staged.
Star support
The Action Week sees events take place in 37 countries in and around football grounds all over Europe, with Europe‘s top stars are lending support to the campaign.
This year saw all 32 UEFA Champions League teams participate in the “Unite Against Racism” campaign, reaching more than 600,000 fans directly at the matches and millions more via live broadcast on television.
The number of participating professional leagues has increased to 14, and the symbolic activities organised by national FAs and individual clubs are reaching out to more people each year.
Each year the FARE network offers financial support for a range of grass-roots activities to address local problems in football clubs at the community level.
Proposals
Recent years have seen hundreds of groups including fan clubs, ethnic minority organisations, football clubs and a variety of NGOs from all over Europe submitting creative proposals.
With the backing of UEFA the FARE network has offered small grants to over 100 grassroots initiatives and provides campaign materials for free.
Many more fan groups are organising themselves to challenge racism and the far-right.
FARE‘s long-term focus on the situation in Eastern and Central Europe has led to an increasing numbers of applications in the Balkans, the former Soviet republics and the new EU members such as Poland, Hungary or Romania.
Highlights
Some of the highlights of the 2008 Action Week in Russia included the work of Maccabi Moscow, a Jewish community football club, who organised two multi-ethnic football events and a St Petersburg-based organization working mostly with homeless people called Put Domoi, who hosted a "Football Against Racism" tournament for homeless and refugee teams at the Metrostoy stadium.
Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, there was strong involvement of the players and professional clubs. The Norwegian "Gi rasisme rødt kort" campaign coordinates anti-racist events in the Premier League, First Division and the Women's Premier League.
In neighbouring Sweden, the players union also organised a “Ge rasismen rött kort” campaign. Campaign flyers will be distributed to an estimated 135.000 spectators and, at the team line-up a short DVD will be shown.
In Denmark, the players' union staged an anti-racism event at Randers vs. Ålborg. Players showed the red card and an anti-racist penalty competition took place during half-time. The previous weekend the Finnish Football Association and the national league (Veikkausliiga) were also involved in the FARE Action Week.
