The “Integration in Ice Hockey” project was initiated by the Deutscher Eishockey-Bund (DEB) and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) to actively participate in the integration process.
From the 2017/18 season onwards he would like to DEB together with its clubs so-called Integration Days for children and young people with a migrant background or from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The topic of integration is of central importance and sport has offered a particularly suitable platform for many years. “In ice hockey it’s not about what language is spoken, where an athlete comes from or what he looks like. Each active participant is evaluated based on the measurable factors of success and failure. Every person can be themselves and is viewed as exactly that. The unique rules of the sport make it possible to work together regardless of religion and origin,” says Karl Schwarzenbrunner, competitive sports officer DEB.
At the beginning of the “Integration in Ice Hockey” project DEB A network has been built in order to be able to specifically support the topic and to obtain expertise from various organizations. The network includes, among others, the integration officers from the federal and state governments as well as the program managers of the federal program “Integration through Sport” in the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and various member and migrant organizations.
In addition to the development of a comprehensive integration concept for the ice hockey clubs, the first seminar on intercultural learning in sport was held as part of the Trainer A training course in Füssen. A seminar comprising 2018 teaching units is planned for 15, which will also lead to the license extension of the DEB-Trainers and DEB-Trainer serves. The aim is to anchor the topic of integration more and more intensively. That is why the “Integration in Ice Hockey” project is also included as a further point in the 5-star training program DEB To ensure that the integration project is organized as well as possible from the start, the clubs are provided with a comprehensive implementation manual. This contains the DEB-Integration concept a general one
Guide to implementing one Integration Days as well as digital advertising materials, multilingual flyers and posters.
“Since the coexistence of people with different cultural and social backgrounds is a current issue, integration represents an urgent social task, which organized sport, as well as the DEB, can make a significant contribution in all areas of his work,” says Schwarzenbrunner.
Julia Eisenrieder, project manager at DEB, sees the urgency of a sustainable development: “You have to ask yourself which aspects need to be taken into account in order to ensure long-term integration in ice hockey. It's not enough to just set up a project and hope that it runs on its own." The 27-year-old approaches the topic in a very structured way: "The existing structures must be evaluated and, if necessary, adjusted to accommodate children with a migrant background or from social backgrounds to enable disadvantaged people to have long-term access to ice hockey. We also have to create the structures in such a way that they support the clubs in their work and can be used sensibly.”