SUPPORTING ACTOR

The initial focus of the 'need to help' seminar was about the people and organisations working with refugees, and as our interests narrowed the scope of research down to how leisure might be being used to encourage a sense of belonging amongst new comers in Belgian society, OKAN-MijnLeuven soon proved to be an excellent potential actor.

OKAN is a Flemish government programme that provides language education to non-Dutch speaking children and youth, whilst MijnLeuven is a programme of the city of Leuven that aims to support youth in all kinds of projects. OKAN-MijnLeuven therefore, is a collaboration between the government of Flanders and the municipality of Leuven, through which OKAN students are offered and encouraged to take part in a wide variety of leisure activities.

OKAN-MijnLeuven does not fixate on the formal teaching of Dutch, but rather strives to provide an immersive environment whereby young people can continue to improve their language skills whilst taking part in fun activities. OKAN-MijnLeuven offers activities, such as zumba, capoeira and football to OKAN-students who come from different schools to get to know each other and have fun. These activities are organised to help the young people to feel comfortable and to adapt to the sort of activities that are commonly provided in Belgium. The idea is that this acts as a type of transition period through which young new comers can consequently be introduced to existing leisure activities that are carried out in Leuven. They are introduced to dance schools, sport clubs and theatre groups amongst others, whilst OKAN-MijnLeuven works with these organisations to ensure accessibility to the existing activities (OKAN-MijnLeuven, 2018c). The organisation can also assist parents and can even contribute financially. OKAN-MijnLeuven is focused on young people between 12 and 18 years old, young people who attend secondary school and more specific OKAN classes which are stricter compared to Burn and Quindo.

Whilst OKAN-MijnLeuven’s profile fitted the aim of our initial research focus, we ultimately decided not to keep them as our central actor, a decision that was partly inspired by the work and goals of OKAN-MijnLeuven themselves. OKAN-MijnLeuven tries to guide non-Dutch speaking children towards existing leisure structures, and emphasises the need for these clubs to be more laagdrempelig so as to encourage people from a broader variety of backgrounds to join their activities (OKAN-MijnLeuven, 2018c). Therefore, we decided that it would be interesting to look more closely at these organisations working with an ‘open door’ policy and encouraging mixed groups, rather than focusing on OKAN-MijnLeuven itself.

OKAN-MijnLeuven inspired us to formulate research questions and the interviews with the organisers and gave us important information about the status quo of the leisure clubs of Flanders. They informed us about the difficulties faced by organisations working to be laagdrempelig and gave us insight into the tactics they use to open up their activities. OKAN-MijnLeuven however are not the main focus of our research, but rather the information we gained through them is used as a guideline and as background information. They have contributed greatly to our understanding of the context that the organisers at Quindo and Burn have to work in.