A story with a happy ending for a teenager long bullied at school, who emerged from silence and isolation thanks to the psychological support provided by NOVE Caring Humans, as part of Sport4Equality project.

Mustafa is a teenager like many others: a high school student, he is involved with the scouts and attends athletics with interest and seriousness. Precisely because of his motivation and initiative, his coach proposes additional training sessions, in which he always participates with great responsibility. An opportunity for growth, sharing, and greater autonomy for the boy, who benefits in terms of physical well-being and socialisation. Moreover, the metacognitive part of the project provides him with tools to protect himself from the risks of cyberbullying, thanks to training in the critical and conscious use of social network.

However, at some point, family and friends notice a radical change in him. Mustafa began to have problems in class, to isolate himself from his classmates’ group until he decided not to go to school any more. “I was very sick, I didn’t want to leave home anymore. Staying at home all day then didn’t make me sleep well at night. I didn’t feel able to work things out, I couldn’t imagine a way out. At school, no one understood how bad I was feeling“, Mustafa confides. Eventually, the boy was able to tell his mother about being bullied and discriminated against by his peers.

“When I realised that it was bullying that had driven him away from school, I felt relieved in some ways because his malaise was taking shape and could finally be addressed but I still didn’t know where to start except by asking for help,” the teenager’s mother tells us.

“I really felt supported during these months by the project psychologists, who helped me to reflect, to direct my actions and to respond to my son’s malaise. I suffered seeing him more and more closed, blocked, but I didn’t know how to make him react,” says the boy’s mother.

Looking back, the woman relates how in the past her son had already asked her to speak to a psychologist, but “through the Asl services they had put me on a waiting list, without giving me any indication of time“. It was really decisive to be able to use the services of a psychologist free of charge and in a short time “‘because my son only wanted to talk to someone who was outside the family and our narrow social network“. The psychological service offered by the project took care of the boy and his mother with excellent results: after only five meetings, Mustafa decided to return to school.

For the psychologist of Sport4Equality project, Margherita Gabos, “Mustafa’s story is an emblematic case of the project because without receiving any kind of support and guidance, the risk of the boy dropping out of school would have been very high. The mother, who works all day and has three other children to look after on her own, would probably have continued to clash with her son, engaging in a tug-of-war over the boy’s return to school that was not functional for his reactivation. In fact, to resolve the stalemate it was necessary to shift the point of view and look at things through the boy’s eyes. Mustafa’s decision to go back to school, to face the consequences of his estrangement, to make up the subjects and to confront himself with his classmates and professors, matured within the framework of individual psychological support. The boy accepted this proposal with great enthusiasm and motivation, immediately recognising its empowerment function.“.

The course is currently underway, and at the moment another very important piece is being worked on, namely the activation of the network with the school to update the teachers and reflect together with them on the construction of an environment that is always safer and more welcoming, both for Mustafa and for his classmates.

The project Sport4Equality, launched in Rome in 2021 and now in its third year, is carried out together with the operating partners Sport Senza Frontiere Onlus, Federazione Italiana Sport Paralimpici e Sperimentali (FISPES), Associazione di Promozione Sociale il Ponte.