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EINBLICKE
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EINBLICKE: Herr Gebken, pretty much everything that takes
place under the heading of "girls‘ football" in Germany is an
offshoot of your "Kicking Girls" initiative. Did you have any idea
that it would be such a success?
GEBKEN: Not at all. I remember my first meeting with the
head of the integrated comprehensive school in Oldenburg's
Ohmstede district. And how the sofa in his office collapsed
beneath us. The Rennplatz cultural centre was in a terrible
state, as were integration and youth work in general throug-
hout the 70s and 80s. And the three community workers who
were there at the time were right when they said that no one
was taking any notice of them.
EINBLICKE: The same could be said of the socially disadvan-
taged children who were the focus of your project in its initial
phase.
GEBKEN: True. When I drove through Oldenburg's Rennplatz
housing development I was very surprised that such a blind
spot existed. The problems there were all too obvious. I had
never encountered this sort of thing in my field of study;
sports science and sports education in the 1990s never took
any notice of the living environment of socially disadvantaged
children.
EINBLICKE: How did the initiative develop?
GEBKEN: In 1996 I gave a seminar on "Sport with Socially Dis-
advantaged Children and Young People". The students and
I carried out an analysis of the Rennplatz sports facilities in
Ohmstede. The results were depressing. There was nothing
at all for girls and only very little on offer for boys.
EINBLICKE: So no girls' football, then.
GEBKEN: It all started with my daughter. We founded a sort
of football club at the elementary school in Ohmstede and
suddenly lots of kids wanted to join in. The then president
of the German Football Federation (DFB), Dr. Theo Zwan-
ziger …
EINBLICKE: …withwhoma few years later you opened the Ol-
denburg University affiliated institute for “Integration through
Sport and Education”...
GEBKEN: … presented the project at Germany's first summit
on integration - naturally as a way of demonstrating the DFB's
social commitment. And to say: "Here's a university lecturer
who is prepared to translate theory into practice. Andwe love
projects like this." That was just before the Football World Cup
in Germany 2006. What happened next was pioneeringwork.
EINBLICKE: In what way?
"
Our society has fantastic treasures"
Ulf Gebken works with socially disadvantaged children. In 1996 the sports educator started a girls' football project in
Oldenburg's Ohmstede district,which has since set a precedent throughout Germany.In the EINBLICKE Interview Gebken
explains how the project became so successful, why poverty is such a difficult subject to put across to people – and why
academia needs to be more proactive in society at large.
Zur Person
Personal Details
Dr. habil. Ulf Gebken ist seit 2010 Leiter des An-Instituts „Integra-
tion durch Sport und Bildung“ der Universität Oldenburg. Seine
Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Sportdidaktik sowie die Integration sozial
benachteiligter Kinder und Jugendlicher durch Sport. 2002 promo-
vierte Gebken zur „Sozialerziehung durch Sport“ an der Universität
Oldenburg, 2010 habilitierte er sich an der Universität Osnabrück
mit einer Studie zum „Sozialraumorientierten Schulsport“. Gebken
ist Mitherausgeber der Zeitschrift Sportpädagogik und Mitglied der
Integrationskommission des Deutschen Fußball-Bundes.
Dr. Ulf Gebken has been head of the affiliated institute "Integration
through Sport and Education" at the University of Oldenburg since
2010.
The focus of his work is sports education and the integration
of socially disadvantaged children and youths through sport. In 2002
Gebken wrote his doctorate on “Social Education through Sport”
at the University of Oldenburg, in 2010 he obtained his habilitation
at the University of Osnabruck with a study on “School Sport and
Community”. Gebken is the co-publisher of the magazine "Sport-
pädagogik" and a member of the integration commission of the
German Football Association.
