Newly crowned SSE Airtricity League champions Cork City FC will visit project partners Schalke 04 this coming weekend, as the Clubs and Supporters for Better Governance in Football project exchange visits continue.
The project is a two-year collaborative partnership co-ordinated by SD Europe and co-financed by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme and UEFA.
Comprising of six member-run clubs and five national supporters organisations from across Europe, partners have focused learning on three themes: good governance, sustainable finance and membership & volunteer engagement, with the exchange visits proving to be an excellent opportunity to reinforce the topics discussed and presented in the workshops over the past 18 months and explore best practice in each respective area.
Representatives from Schalke 04 visited their counterparts in Ireland back in April along with Malmö FF, hearing about how the Irish club promotes and runs the membership of the FORAS supporters’ trust, operations on match night and how volunteers are included at the heart of all key activities.
Schalke 04 visit Cork City in April 2017
Over the coming days, Cork City’s vice chairman Mike Derham and project co-ordinator for CCFC, John Kennedy, will travel to Gelsenkirchen and hear about Schalke 04’s schools programme and activities in the local community. They will be accompanied by SD Europe’s Acting CEO, Niamh O’Mahony.
“The exchange visits have proven very worthwhile and an extremely positive way to ensure the information presented at each workshop is understood in a very practical sense. As two clubs involved in European competitions on a regular basis, Schalke 04 and Cork City have found plenty to discuss and the coming days will allow the connection build even further,” Niamh explains.
The Cork City delegation has a keen interest in learning more about the SLO role and how it works with such effect in Germany and will also take the opportunity to understand how a club the scale of Schalke 04 operates on a day-to-day basis. They will also enjoy some football during their visit – Mainz visiting the Veltins-Arena on Friday evening.
To learn more about the project, visit Our Project. If you know an organisation that would benefit from the knowledge and information being gathered and shared during the project, visit our Contact Us page and drop us a line for more details!