Summer profiles: using sport to unite refugees and host communities

In the fourth episode of our summer profile series on Inside Geneva, we talk to a Geneva career woman and a Geneva asylum-seeker about a project to unite communities through sport. Surely the world’s humanitarian capital is good at welcoming refugees and immigrants? “We have all these international organisations working on various global challenges. But when you talk to people from Geneva, they don't really know what's happening in this bubble,” says Lena Menge, from the Geneva Graduate Institute and founder of Flag 21. For asylum-seekers, arriving in a new country, even a safe one, can be hard. “I was very lonely. It wasn’t easy. You feel lost and don’t really know what’s happening or where you are. It takes time to realise where you are and what you are supposed to do,” says Mahdie Alinejad, an asylum-seeker from Iran and a coach with Flag 21. Flag 21 is a project that brings locals and asylum-seekers together – to run, swim, do yoga, and much more. “Sport was actually a ...