Switzerland: Integration Through Sports

In Europe, 1.3 million applications for asylum were submitted in 2016, with nearly 30 thousand of them in Switzerland. “The refugee crisis prompted us to think about what contribution we could make towards integration. This is how the idea of a tournament was born,” explained organizers of the St. Gallen Integration Through Sports activities, Marialda Palmieri and Janine Hubschmid. The CEMS Club St.Gallen invited refugee asylum seekers to sports events twice in 2016. They launched the first sports event in the spring, which attracted 26 young refugees from Eritrea and Afghanistan, aged 13-17 years, participating together with around 26 CEMS and HSG students.