Public pedagogy and leadership in sports organisations: Futebol dá força for sustainability?

Futebol dá força (Football gives strength)

Soccer has been used to initiate change and strengthen communities all over the world. Worldwide soccer is shaped and reflected in politics, economics and culture and is often used as a political tool for improving health and communities, fostering social cohesion and social inclusion, building community networks, improving relationships in community and as an instrument for socialisation and integration (Al Ganideh, 2018; Andersson 2020a, 2020b; Duffey et al., 2019; Parnell et al., 2015). FDF is one of many sports organisations in this context and one that describes itself as a social movement that ‘will change the world’.

The organisation is an independent foundation that uses soccer to achieve the vision of ‘all girls in the world getting access to their rights and the opportunity to reach their full potential’. (www.futeboldaforca.com, 2018–12-23) The purpose of the organisation is to ‘build structures and safe places through education, support and inspiration, to give girls improved self-esteem, knowledge about their rights and tools to transform their dreams into goals’. The organisation states that it wants to

lead change and strive to be a bridge between an old world and a new one, where everyone is included . . . By basing our work on co-creation, we can be everything we need to be and also make sure that we are relevant in the local contexts where we work.

Co-creation based on values such as equality, inclusion, trust and transparency is the organisation’s working model. FDF involves approximately 1400 leaders, 17,000 girls and young women in 134 communities and 25 countries and works explicitly with SDGs 3, 4, 5, 10, 16 and 17 in the 2030 Agenda. The organisation uses what it calls evidence-based methods to educate and empower leaders through leadership training, so that they are equipped to ‘empower girls as well as people in their community – thus enabling everyone to be part of the solution’. As well as educating soccer clubs in leadership and in being more inclusive, FDF also conducts educational activities with private companies in value-based leadership, equality, diversity, change management and inclusion, arranges public seminars and lectures and appears and is active in the daily press, on television and on the radio, which means that the social and political influence of FDF is visible in public media.

FDF engages and educates soccer coaches (both face-to-face and online), mainly young women, as leaders and role models, who in turn educate new leaders. This strategy, train-the-trainer, is useful for smaller organisations with limited staff and budgets to multiply impact (Hull et al., 2020: 92). It is a strategy to strengthen young females’ leadership in local communities, so that ‘leadership experiences gained through sport-based initiatives may make distinctive contributions to their empowerment in other social, economic and political spheres’ and localised ‘female role models can have an especially strong impact (Lindsey and Chapman, 2017: 82).

Through collaboration with mainly local actors (e.g. ministries, organisations, municipalities, clubs, companies, etc.), FDF tries to have a more long-term and systematic impact on local communities, with a specific focus on changing norms and attitudes in order to increase girls’ and young women’s empowerment, health, equality, inclusion, good education, lifelong learning and partnership through soccer. Thus, FDF co-creates public pedagogical practices as an NGO working within the field of SFD by building local community capacity for change towards sustainability.

Public + pedagogy

The word public signifies that everything that appears in public ‘can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity’ (Arendt, 1958/1998: 50). It is the presence of others ‘who see what we see and hear what we hear’ that ‘assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves’ (1958/1998: 50). According to Arendt, when we leave our private sphere and confirm our individuality by acting and engaging in common affairs, the appearance constitutes our reality and creates a ‘public realm’. Public also signifies the world itself – the common world in which all humans are gathered and relate to each other and that

we enter when we are born and what we leave behind when we die . . . It is what we have in common not only with those who live with us, but also with those who were here before and with those who will come after us. (1958/1998: 55)

Accordingly, the permanence of our common world, its civility, human flourishing and belonging, is dependent on the extent to which it is public and, thus, the public quality of spaces and places and human togetherness in becoming public.

Pedagogy is a process that begins with ‘the intention of one subject to influence the life of another’, is ‘always intentional and goal directed’ (Gaztambide-Fernándes and Arráiz Matute, 2014: 56) and aims to induce change even if the change or goal is ‘not always necessarily explicit or even articulated’ (2014: 57). When new ways of thinking, acting and knowing ‘that also transform knowledge, self-experience, awareness, understanding, appreciation, memory, social relations, and the future’ (Ellsworth, 2005: 37) are sought after, we can define it as a pedagogical intent. When we come to know differently, when our view of the world and ourselves meets the outside world, and when self and other, personal and social are disrupted and refigured, something has become pedagogical. ‘Pedagogy stages encounters with the unthought – encounters with the future as in the making’ (Ellsworth, 2005: 38). Thus, pedagogy as a practice and process qualitatively transforms the ways in which we think and act in the world and, while doing this, also changes the world. It provides opportunities and enables new things to happen, as a process of continuation, emergence and change and supports new ways of knowing, feeling and being in the world.

In a broad sense, public pedagogy concerns the learning, socialisation, meaning making and personal formation that occurs both within and beyond the realm of formal educational institutions (cf. Sandlin et al., 2011). It involves social, interpersonal and intrapersonal processes and situations, the staging of encounters with unfamiliar aspects that have not previously been considered but that could qualitatively transform how we think and act. It also changes the world by allowing for the birth of something new (Andersson, 2017; Ellsworth, 2005). A vital actor in public pedagogy is the public pedagogue, the catalyst that in some way actualises, designs, governs or sparks pedagogical processes and situations. The public pedagogue then becomes both a source and a leader of social, cultural and political change oriented to the public good (Roberts and Steiner, 2010). As a leader, the public pedagogue takes on the responsibility to ‘maximize participation and inclusion in the public deliberation of normative values’ to promote ‘subjective re-articulation . . . in the interest of developing critical social agency oriented to the public good’ (Roberts and Steiner, 2010: 26). Biesta (2012, 2014) distinguishes between three types of pedagogical practices. In each type there is a pedagogue, described as ‘someone who conducts intentional educational work – but what distinguishes the three modes of public pedagogy lies precisely in what the public pedagogue does’ (Biesta, 2014: 21).

Pedagogy for the public is about information and instruction, where the public pedagogue instructs citizens and tells them what to think and how to act (Biesta, 2012, 2014). This form of directed and closed pedagogy is oriented towards specific world views, thereby reducing plurality and difference and the possibility to openly engage in and explore the world. It is enacted when individuals are told to follow specific rules and are inspired and motivated to behave in specific ways. That is, it is a pedagogy that is conducted from the outside. The public pedagogue tells groups of individuals what to do, think and be and where the groups are acted upon as a mass (cf. a silent majority, Baudrillard, 1978/2007) and as objects of instruction and inspiration. Thus, pedagogy for the public is a specific-world-view-approach through which participants become objects of influence.

Pedagogy of the public is about learning and developing critical awareness. This is done by the public themselves, but where the public pedagogue assists with values, norms, knowledge and understandings that will prepare them for action. The pedagogical work is located ‘within democratic processes and practices’ (Biesta, 2012: 692). The logic is learning and socialisation first and then – following from the correct understanding and specific norms and values – agency and action. It can be described as a citizenship-as-achievement-approach (Biesta and Lawy, 2006), where citizenship is viewed as a status, with specific claims that individuals as rights holders can achieve using the ‘best’ methods and attitudes: ‘a status that is achieved only after one has traversed a particular developmental and educational trajectory’ (2006: 42). Thus, pedagogy of the public is a pedagogy that is conducted from the inside, where the public pedagogue helps participants with values, norms, knowledge, methods and understandings that will help them to become better actors, motivated and prepared for action.

Pedagogy in the interest of publicness ‘is about the invention of new ways of being and doing’ (Biesta, 2014: 23). This is a form of pedagogy that is ‘entirely public, both in its orientation and in its execution’ (Biesta, 2014: 23) and is about learning in relation, action and plurality. Here the public pedagogue invites people into relations with the future as open and staged possibilities for participants and events to become public with ‘multiple beginnings and middles and no knowable ends’ (Ellsworth, 2005: 107). The logic is interruption and entanglement with a concern for the public quality of human togetherness. It is a pedagogy of undecidability and for creating opportunities in which ‘we come to know the world by acting in it, making something of it, and doing the never-ending work and play of responding to what our actions make occur’ (Ellsworth, 2005: 56). This form of pedagogy can be described as a citizenship-as-practice-approach (Biesta and Lawy, 2006), where citizenship is viewed as an inclusive and relational concept that assumes that everyone in society is moving through citizenship as a practice and is ‘routinely engaged in a continuous and thoroughgoing public dialogue’ (2006: 44). Thus, pedagogy by publicness is a pedagogy in the making, where the public pedagogue invites people into a relation with the future as open and stages possibilities for participants and events to become public without having the last word about how things really are, who we are and should be, thereby keeping open the possibility of a space where freedom (i.e. action) can appear (Arendt, 1958/1998).

Table 1 is a summary of the three types of public pedagogy that can be used to identify, categorise and qualify different forms of pedagogical practices.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Analytical schema of public pedagogy practices.

Public pedagogy	Educational logic	Role of the public pedagogue
for the public	Listen, get engaged, follow instructions and behave accordingly. Do as informed.	Instruct, inform, inspire and promote specific behaviour and values.
of the public	Develop critical awareness, learn and incorporate values, norms, knowledge, methods and understanding. Learn, accept and prepare for action.	Support, facilitate, give and practise good examples and behave as a role model.
by publicness	Explore openly, create relations and collaborations, communicate and act. Engage, co-create and learn in action.	Invite, relate, attend and be present, interrupt, challenge and give perspective.

Table 1 is used in the analysis of FDF in order to identify the types of pedagogical practices that are present and their leadership logics and actions.

Leadership

Leadership is not an individual responsibility for a designated leader with a title, but is a collective process and responsibility for all stakeholders. Leader is not the same as leadership. Leadership is a relational, power-sensitive, context-dependent, co-created process of social influence that aims to reach concrete and task-related goals at group level. It involves dealing with norms, struggling with ideals, values and pressures and managing meaning, and calls for insightfulness, negotiation and pragmatism in the search for the common good (cf. Alvesson and Einola, 2019). Leadership can be said to emerge as an adaptive solution to various group or community challenges.

According to Heifetz (1994), leadership can be seen as ‘an activity to mobilize adaptation’ (1994: 27) and help people ‘to make progress on the adaptive problems they face’ (1994: 245). Adaptive work requires learning, a change in values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. Accordingly, the task of leadership consists of ‘choreographing and directing learning processes’ (1994: 244); a process that requires educative strategies in which appointed leaders engage stakeholders in facing challenges and conducting processes of inquiry. These democratic processes and activities of collective decision-making, formation, conservation and transformation of life in association with others (Dewey, 1927/1997) enable all stakeholders to become involved, thereby facilitating communication and critical inquiries that will increase the possibility of finding more and perhaps better ideas and solutions.

Based on the above, leadership can be defined as the creation of direction, alignment and commitment. When a group of people gets things done by agreeing on ‘the direction that defines what they want to achieve, align their efforts and resources to achieve that direction, and commit to helping each other and maintaining the work over time’, leadership is in the making (Hull et al., 2020: 8).

Direction is a matter of agreeing on what is to be accomplished and identifying what success looks like and what kind of shared visions and goals should be reached. It is a dynamic dimension of leadership that often changes when ‘stakeholders learn from, and with, each other, and from encountering the future they co-create’ (Hull et al., 2020: 65). This is part of the adaptive work and is a process of learning, articulating the gap between aspirations (values) and reality, being open to new solutions, constantly exploring possible actions, creating new knowledge and solving problems together. Acting in what Dewey (1938/1997) would call an intelligent way, leadership requires that we do not block the road to inquiry, that we constantly try to find out what works best at the moment by acting and reflecting on the consequences and before acting again try to identify and navigate new actions towards preferable consequences.

To do the work, solve and deal with problems and keep the direction, stakeholders have to coordinate and align their efforts. Alignment can be achieved when ‘time, talent, and resources are coordinated so that all necessary activities occur at the right times and places’ (Hull et al., 2020: 65). Alignment, like direction, needs to be responsive to learning and changing contexts.

Commitment is needed to make progress and involves investing own resources, taking responsibility for ‘the success and well-being of the collective effort’ (Hull et al., 2020: 66), trusting one another and sticking to the task in difficult times. Commitment can be promoted by ‘continuous communication and shared measurements that hold everyone accountable’ (2020: 99), as a way of building trust, being inclusive and transparent and clarifying and adjusting the vision and goals as stakeholders learn.

The concepts of public, pedagogy and leadership are all defining elements of the public pedagogical leadership approach, which is the adaptive, socialisation and learning-oriented collective process with a shared direction, alignment and commitment that occurs both within and beyond the realm of formal and informal educational institutions.

Analysis

The analysis is purpose driven and theoretically informed (Patton, 2015: 527) and uses the three forms of public pedagogy and public pedagogical leadership operationalised in a three-step analysis.

The data is coded by using the schema and categorised to pedagogical forms (practices). This is followed by a qualification of each main form into sub-forms and their qualitative common characteristics. In other words, the data is condensed into meaningful units in terms of key concepts and expressions that are empirically close to the data (coding). Similar codes are synthesised and renamed, categorised and clustered to sub-forms of the public pedagogical practice. The main form of public pedagogy is then labelled based on the characteristics of the sub-forms. Thus, the schema is used as a lens to ‘read’, code and categorise the data.

All the identified situations are named (coded) and categorised into main themes, i.e. the typical situations of FDF’s public pedagogical leadership and actions are identified.

Research ethics

Before conducting the study, the country director of FDF in Sweden was contacted by e-mail to describe the study. This resulted in a telephone call to discuss the possible approaches and ways forward together. FDF consented to the use of all its material on the website and its social media platform (Facebook) and provided extra material describing its educational programmes and ways of working. Information from the website and additional material has been used to describe the organisation.

It should be noted that the data transcript mainly consists of FDF’s self-reported information. The information has different purposes, such as marketing FDF, communicating its values and activities, reporting on ongoing events, communicating internally and externally, etc. The information could be viewed as a description of how the organisation wishes to be perceived by itself and by others. To find out how FDF functions as a public pedagogue and leader in practice and how its leadership impacts community change – and not simply trust its self-reported contribution – it has to be explored in action, e.g. by using observations and interviews. The result should be valued in accordance with this obvious short-coming of the study.

The masses

Influence is through public media interviews, such as talking about the organisation, its activities and aims, and sharing FDF’s knowledge and methods. Appearing on national television and in radio broadcasts and national and regional newspapers is common for the organisation. For example:

This morning our founder Cecilia joined TV4 News Morning and talked about how we strengthen leaders who create safe meeting places for girls on and off the soccer field, all over the world through FDF Movement where we train leaders online wherever they are in the world and give them tools and support to strengthen girls’ self-esteem. (FDF Facebook, 2018-04-24)

FDF has also received a couple of national awards for its successful work, participated in gala awards, given short speeches and received appreciation. For example:

Wow what an evening! Yesterday several of our leaders gathered in Stockholm to attend the Sverige United Gala to celebrate initiatives promoting integration and inclusion through football . . . we congratulate Ella and Sahar who won the award Guldhanden! (FDF Facebook, 2018-02-16)

By being publicly awarded and frequently occurring in different types of public media, FDF gains recognition as an influencing sport NGO nationally and internationally by indicating direction, using its common resources, engaging others and informing the masses based on its knowledge.

The consumers

FDF receives financial support by publicly collecting money and securing its finances in order to make it possible for girls to play soccer. This is part of its alignment and commitment. At the same time as indicating the direction, it wants others to join. This advertisement is typical:

A new season of soccer leagues is about to begin in Mozambique & Zambia – and this year we will reach 10,000 girls with soccer, self-esteem, more knowledge about their rights and tools to turn their dreams into goals! And of course, we need more footballs – help us by SWISHING A ⚽ . . . One football costs 50 SEK(FDF Facebook, 2018-02-16).

Advertising is also directed towards companies and organisations by promising inspirational talks, competence development and the delivery of usable knowledge and methods to establish an inclusive leadership practice. FDF also uses merchandise to promote its messages, runs a web shop and distributes its products at different events. For example: ‘The girls at our Summer Camp in Södertälje, Sweden, also got their “Yes, she can” t-shirts today’ (FDF Facebook, 2018-08-08).

The civil and company sector

FDF influences and engages different organisations, municipalities, confederations and the like in the civil sector through conference presentations and involvement, by for example presenting, discussing, having dialogues with, taking part in and learning together with these actors. The following is one of many representative examples:

Our founder Cecilia Safaee was invited by Stockholms Fotbollförbund to participate at Tele2 Arena and talk about gender equality and inclusion last Saturday. Cecilia talked about the importance of leadership and role models . . . A big thanks to Stockholms Fotbollförbund for creating this opportunity and to all clubs, federations and organizations that took part of the day – together we’re doing a great job in the right direction to create an equal and inclusive environment both on and off the football fields in Sweden (FDF Facebook, 2018-09-10).

FDF also plans, hosts and facilitates workshops, provides mentoring and talks and shares its experiences regionally, nationally and internationally. This is one of many examples:

Today at the Laureus Sport for Good Global Summit, our founder Cecilia had the honor of facilitating a workshop around how to create a safe space in sports . . . Happy to share our methods with other inspiring organizations and people from all over the world!

For companies, FDF conducts customised competence days with inspirational talks, discussions and the sharing of tools and experiences, for example:

Today our founder Cecilia joined EY in Skaraborg County to talk about value-based leadership and share our lessons learned and methods from the football field adapted for businesses . . . 120 people were inspired, but also left the day with more knowledge and practical tools to work with value-based leadership in their teams! (FDF Facebook, 2018-12-05)

FDF is shown to be a recognised and influential actor in both the civil and company sector in Sweden, as well as internationally through its public pedagogical activities of promoting values and visions, strengthening its resources, engaging and aligning with other actors and contributing to organisational learning.

Tutoring and networking

FDF uses different types of team meetings and arranges meetings within the organisation as well as together with national and local stakeholders in order to plan, give support and discuss activities and aims. One typical example is the following:

In Mozambique, we’re having a busy week with team days with our whole team gathered in Maputo from all over the country to work out how 2018 can be the best year ever – the year we reach 10,000 girls in Mozambique and train all our coaches in value based leadership, sexuality and SRHR, and how to create a safe space for our girls on and off the football field so that our girls can create better future prospects for themselves with no teenage marriages, early unwanted pregnancies and interrupted schooling (FDF Facebook, 2018-02-27).

Tutoring and tutor training are fundamental educational dimensions of FDF in which leaders in FDF are coached, supported, helped, given advice, inspired, encouraged and fostered in the right mindset and methods of the organisation. Leaders are also trained to become tutors within FDF and to support other leaders. There are also formal positions with a broader responsibility:

We are so happy to announce and welcome our new colleague and community manager Inger to our team. Inger will be working with our network in Sweden & the Åland Islands, coaching all FDF-leaders as well as all football clubs that work with us. She will support, help, inspire and encourage all our leaders in their daily work in empowering girls through football while also support them in their own development as leaders (FDF Facebook, 2018-04-23).

FDF also functions as a social and knowledge support hub by contributing new knowledge, maintaining a shared vision (direction), creating supportive conditions and energising, encouraging and connecting leaders (alignment and commitment) within the organisation. A leader reports the following:

It is very important & empowering to be part of a network where everyone works for everyone’s equal opportunities & value. Through FDF, I have received support in how girls’ self-esteem & rights can be strengthened, both on the football pitch and in the community (FDF Facebook, 2018-11-23).

FDF maintains and strengthens direction, alignment and commitment through regional, national and international networks, conducts tutoring within the organisation and educates new tutors when needed.

Formal training

Locally based formal leadership training of future and active leaders, mainly young women, has been one of the most common activities for FDF to grow, influence and support communities nationally and internationally according to its goals and agendas. Leadership training is conducted locally, where FDF educators try to inspire, motivate, discuss, critically reflect, support, encourage, plan, practice, equip and prepare the participants by giving them the right knowledge and methods and fostering the FDF mindset. Formal training is often conducted in collaboration with national and local stakeholders and partners that support and facilitate valuable resources. The following is one of many examples:

What a week in Pongola, South Africa! Sarita, Mike & Frida, our Country Director . . . are holding our full six days Leadership Training for 27 leaders in the community . . . the leaders have already been equipped with knowledge and methods on how to empower girls through football – and they already talk about when they will start Pongola’s first girls teams ever! How cool?! A big thanks to Insamlingsstiftelsen . . . for a great collaboration, you make this possible! (FDF Facebook, 2018-06-28)

In order to have a global reach and a wider influence and support in local communities, FDF conducts online leadership training to equip new leaders worldwide with knowledge and methods and to foster the FDF mindset. One person who finished his online training ‘has since then started his first girls’ football team and safe space in Bungoma outside Nairobi, Kenya, and is about to start yet another one’ and has also started to empower other leaders who are joining in ‘the quest to empower girls through football in Kenya’ (FDF Facebook, 2018-07-10).

Formal training both locally and online is a dominating influencing activity of FDF that enables the organisation to include new members and impact more communities worldwide.

Co-training

FDF spreads its vision, aligns its resources with others and engages with different stakeholders through educational collaborations with clubs, organisations and federations by co-designing, planning, customising and conducting educational programmes. One example of this is from Sweden:

This weekend we kicked off our collaboration with IF Brommapojkarna for real! IF BP is Europe’s biggest football club that has taken a strategic decision to become the first gender equal club in Sweden (and perhaps the world?!) – of course something that we support. As a first step we trained some of their core female leaders in Value based Leadership this weekend (FDF Facebook, 2018-08-31).

The FDF programme, i.e. a specific body of knowledge, aims, values, attitudes, exercises, methods and techniques, etc., is used as a basis for influencing by tutoring, tutor training, formal leadership training locally and online and co-designed educational programmes (but not single learning activities such as inspirational talks and competence days).

Relations and networking

FDF uses co-working as a leadership strategy by building international, national, regional and local networks with stakeholders. Activities are planned and carried out together with local actors, who are empowered to build structures and work for sustainable change by becoming independent of the organisation:

We’re ending this week in the best possible way in the province of Inhambane, Mozambique, were [sic] we this year will reach 14 districts – and in all districts, our programs will be coordinated by this amazing team from the District Departments of the Ministry of Education. We believe that in the long run we shouldn’t be empowering girls – but governments, school systems, football federations and community leaders should! Therefore we integrate all our activities within local structures, to step by step incorporate our programs into sustainable structures enabling girls’ empowerment today – and tomorrow. In Inhambane, this team of officials from the District Departments of the Ministry of Education are ready to rock together with our amazing 144 coaches in the province that this year will improve the future aspects of an estimated 4,320 girls only in the province of Inhambane! (FDF Facebook, 2018-03-23)

Another type of leadership action is to attend celebrations, come together and hang out in the local community:

Happy with our friends at Tillsammans Cup, founders Erik & Marica, celebrating diversity and how much better we are together! Come and join in the celebrations at Enskede IP in Stockholm, or all over the country at the local events. Let’s stand up for Sweden and celebrate our National Day in the best way possible, with love, football and good vibes! (FDF Facebook, 2018-06-06)

Hanging out and celebrating is a leadership action through which FDF influences by simply being there, showing commitment, support and care.

Joint explorations

A recurring activity in the countries in which FDF arranges national leagues for girls’ soccer is players’ workshops and learning sessions on the pitch. The leadership strategy, which FDF calls ‘the first half’ of every game, is that workshops are conducted with the players by means of discussions, role play and open conversations to, for example, learn about their rights. During the game audience workshops are also arranged in which the gathered audience performs role play, theatre, debates and open conversations:

During the past weeks of games in our national football league Mutola Cup in Mozambique, we’ve worked on children’s rights with our 14,000 girls, their parents and communities, in our weekly first half of the game. Few have been aware of and respect children’s rights, as we’ve noted throughout the stories, comments and questions asked by our girls and the audience at our football fields (FDF Facebook, 2018-07-08).

Soccer games are used as opportunities to discuss and have a dialogue with the players and the people gathered, thereby leading by values and influencing the norms and behaviour in the local community.

Invitations

Participatory-driven conversations are used in girls’ training sessions as a way of opening up conversations based on the players’ questions, worries, ideas and needs so that FDF leaders can create safe spaces for the girls to talk, support and care for each other. This pedagogical method is called Talkbox time:

Talkbox-time occurs in Albera’s team once a week, when a training session is transformed into a safe space to talk about whatever the girls in the team have put in the Talkbox. The Talkbox is a box where all girls in the team can put notes with topics they want to discuss, something they want to learn more about or questions they want to ask. The notes are all anonymous, and Albera can then understand what’s going on in the girls’ lives and what she can help them with (FDF Facebook, 2018-01-11).

In this way, FDF influences the participants by inviting them to contribute content to in-group conversations for and by the participants with preparation, support, active listening and help from the leader.

Other leadership strategies and ways of influencing are by offering open trainings and camps. Locally, FDF arranges open trainings and camps for girls, free of charge with food and ‘fika’ and without notification requirements, often in collaboration with clubs and other local stakeholders:

This is how happy our FDF-coaches . . . became when they finally got a training time at the field waiting since January. Do you live close by and want to join? Just show up on Fisksätra IP on Thursdays between 16.00 and 17.00 with ‘fika-time’ afterwards (FDF Facebook, 2018-06-04).

FDF also uses what could be called encounters with the unknown by arranging and inviting to events and encounters with people and places. One example of this is the girls’ team from Mozambique, which participated in the largest youth soccer tournament, Gothia Cup, in Gothenburg, Sweden, all of which was made possible by FDF and financial support from sponsors:

The girls and their trainers had a wonderful but difficult time on the ice with the Swedish team Frölunda Indians! Good job girls! They fell a couple of times, but for being their first time on ice they did an absolutely great job! (FDF Facebook, 2018-07-17)

During the same tournament FDF invited people to come and meet and cheer for the team together with a former national men’s soccer team player. By inviting people to these types of open events, FDF influences by building relations between people and between people and places and creating open learning opportunities with the public.