Norway

GATEFOTBALL

Gatefotball (Street Soccer) is a project started by the Salvation Army. It focuses on drug rehabilitation for men and women through sport.

The Salvation Army in Norway has been using football to reach out to different groups for more than 30 years. Gatefotball was officially created in 2005. Since then, the programme has expanded into many cities across Norway, and an annual Norwegian Street Football Cup was founded.

ORGANISATION DETAILS

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PARTICIPANTS

Homeless men and women, those affected by substance abuse, and other marginalised groups.

LOCATIONS

Oslo, Lillestrøm, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger / Sandnes, Egersund and Haugesund.

Country statistics

1 out of 189 in Human Development Index rating
(UNDP, 2019)

$78, 180 Average annual salary per person (World Bank, 2021)

8/10 people in norway own their own home (Norwegian Government, 2022).

Norway is located in Northern Europe, bordering the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 5.5 million, most of the population live in the south where the climate is milder and is better connected to mainland Europe (CIA Factbook, 2019).

Norway hosted the Homeless World Cup in Oslo in 2017.

The refugee population in Norway mainly comprises of individuals from Syria, Eritrea, and Somalia (CIA Factbook, 2019). In 2020 Norway reported its lowest number of registered asylum-seekers in 30 years with 1,387 (UNHCR, 2021).

Homelessness in Norway is defined as “a person who does not own or rent a home, and is left with coincidental or temporary housing arrangements, who temporarily stay with close relatives, friends, or acquaintances, or is under the care of the correctional services or an institution, due for release within two months and without a home. People without arranged accommodation for the next night are also considered homeless.” (Housing for Welfare, 2014: 31).

Eradicating homeless and reducing poverty have consistently been a focus of the Norwegian government. In 1996 they started to complete a homelessness survey in collaboration with local agencies, this takes place every four years (Journal of Social Policy, 2022).

The 2021-2024 Norwegian government strategy, ‘we all need a place to call home’, prioritises housing for disadvantaged individuals.

They found that while as many as eight out of ten own the home they live in, approximately 179,000 individuals are disadvantaged in the housing market - about 78,000 of those are children and young people under the age of 20. (Norwegian Government, 2022).