Count Me In

Refugee background migrants to Australia face significant challenges. We work in partnership with community organisations to investigate and promote conditions that support children and families from refugee backgrounds to overcome barriers to social inclusion, participation and wellbeing.
Research Summary 2020

Count Me In

Count Me In is a partnership project between the University of Melbourne and a number of community based organisations (Merri Health, Arabic Welfare, Moreland City Council, Hume City Council, VicHealth, Centre for Multicultural Youth, Fawkner Primary School, Badminton Victoria and many local sporting clubs) that aims to increase opportunities and provide support for sports participation by culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. This project aims to promote physical, mental and social health of migrant and refugee background young people by providing supported opportunities to participate in sport. Bi-cultural Community Support Co-ordinators (CSCs) have been employed to recruit and support the engagement of young people and their families into local mainstream sports clubs.

Count Me In! from Brockhoff Child Health Program on Vimeo.

Video – by Iman Balla

‘Sport Leadership and Society’ undergraduate student project, University of Melbourne
https://vimeo.com/246892521

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Scoping Study 2014-2015: Promoting sports participation for refugee-background young people

Sports participation confers a range of physical and psychosocial benefits. For refugee and migrant youth, it also has the potential to be a critical mediator for achieving positive settlement and the capacity to engage meaningfully in Australian society. Participation in organised sports increases physical activity levels and physical health, and is also associated with lower levels of depression and suicidality; greater levels of psychosocial maturity, self-esteem, social connectedness and social competence; reduced involvement in antisocial activities; and higher academic outcomes. Refugee and migrant youth have low participation rates in sport however, and identified barriers include costs, discrimination and a lack of cultural sensitivity in sporting environments, a lack of knowledge of mainstream sports services on the part of refugee background settlers, lack of access to transport, culturally determined gender norms and family attitudes.

Published paper
Block K and Gibbs L. 2017. Promoting Social Inclusion through Sport for Refugee-Background Youth in Australia: Analysing Different Participation Models. Social Inclusion, Volume 5, Issue 2, Pages 91–100. DOI: 10.17645/si.v5i2.903

Progress Report August 2015

Project Team