Capoeira4Refugees (C4R)

Delivering capoeira classes to vulnerable and marginalised children and youth is C4R's main activity. Capoeira was developed around the 16th Century in Brazil by Afro-Brazilian slaves who used the playful physical dialogues to empower themselves towards their struggle to freedom. The historical and narrative context of capoeira resonates with the struggle of vulnerable communities - in particular, refugees - and therefore offers what C4R sees as a unique approach towards community empowerment.

C4R's curriculum is based on the organisation's 5 values: (i) playfulness (play builds social and cognitive skills); (ii) diversity (sports programmes can be used to promote social inclusion and build peace); (iii) community (the shared "ritual identity" helps improve and strengthen relations between youth and their peers in host communities); (iv) health and well-being (physical activity relieves stress, improves mood, and helps youth recover from trauma); and (v) skills building (giving youth an opportunity to build life skills, which can support creative thinking, coping with stress, and making positive choices in their lives). C4R follows an integrated, tiered methodology in its capoeira classes in Syria, Palestine, and Jordan to help participants deal with their experiences of conflict. C4R programmes include:

• Drop-in Community Classes: People from the community are invited to try and participate in capoeira classes, aiming to raise awareness about the impact of capoeira.
• Regular Community Classes: C4R teaches capoeira to children and youth aged 13-24 who are victims of conflict. C4R teaches capoeira in Syria through trainers who were previously part of the ToTs classes, and also in Palestine and Jordan.
• Training of Trainers (ToTs): C4R identifies talented students from the capoeira classes who can take part in ToTs. These ToTs are essential to building up local skillsets and to allowing local people to own capoeira within their communities.
• Women's classes: C4R believes that capoeira can play an important role in creating communities based on equality, as the practice itself has no winners nor losers. Some of the theories about capoeira's history argue that capoeira was started by women for women. Furthermore, the fact that capoeira was born out of the fight against oppression speaks to women's issues.
• C4R Tour: International Capoeira Masters and players go to some of the most marginalised communities in the region to foster solidarity, support integration between host and refugee communities, and contribute to helping children and youth deal with the impact of displacement and the fear of an unknown future. The tour's itinerary is designed not only to allow people to experience the work that C4R has been doing in the refugee communities but to experience the region's culture through food, music, and local experiences.
• Capoeira Peace Day (CPD): The CPD is designed to catalyse a movement to support capoeira social projects and bring recognition to the art form and impact of capoeira as a tool of transformative social change.
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool: C4R is developing an M&E tool based on quantitative data collected from trainers in Jordan and in Syria. This tool, which will hopefully be standardised and then used by other organisations, aims to streamline and be a more effective system to collect data from trainers in the field.

Children, Youth, Refugees

C4R received the 2015 Euro-Med Dialogue Award, an annual prize co-organised by the Anna Lindh Foundation and the Fondazione Mediterraneo which recognises the efforts of individuals and organisations working for the promotion of intercultural dialogue.