On the 15th July, 120 young people aged 7-18 came together to participate in the 8372 Football Tournament held in Keighley. Young people from Bradford Supplementary schools participated in the tournament, uniting to stand against hatred and intolerance.
Alina Kahn, RSI Community Champion and Interim Head of Diversity and Cohesion, spoke to participants about the genocide in Srebrenica and the events of July 1995. Rebecca Heron from Remembering Srebrenica then informed participants about the reasons for uniting together in a game of football; standing up to hatred and intolerance to ensure that something like this never happens again.
Players competed either in the under 11s tournament or the 11+ and the winners of the matches were rewarded with trophies presented by Remembering Srebrenica chairman Dr Waqar Azmi at the Cohesion Bradford awards dinner.
Throughout the year, Cohesion Bradford has run Stand up, Speak out, Make a Difference, training young people to become SUSOMAD ambassadors and present Anne Frank and U and Remembering Srebrenica exhibition to their peers and other schools. The young ambassadors at SUSOMAD are doing just this by educating their peers about the events of the past and relating it to their experiences in their own communities. In doing so they are remembering those who were killed in Srebrenica and helping others to learn the lessons in order to create a more cohesive society for all. The importance of this is clearly communicated by the young ambassadors, some of whom have experienced prejudice themselves, and their passion for tackling hatred shines through.
