Reponse moved from Rwanda to Australia in 2019 as a refugee, and it was challenging being surrounded by people he couldn't communicate with. That was until he started playing football.
The more he played, the stronger his language skills became, and this continued off the football field too.
Reponse tried out for a Mildura football team and impressed the coach. He was asked to be the goalkeeper for the under-16s side, the next age group up."I got scared. I was worried I was going to get injured and felt nervous I couldn't save the shots," he says.Reponse's older brother Austin helped him tackle the fear head-on, training every day."He'd tell me to go in the net, face the ball, wherever the ball goes, that's where you go.
"It doesn't matter where you come from, your background, how you look or your skin colour, it's the game we enjoy so we should try to support each other."As a coach and community leader, Maia Tua-Davidson knows firsthand the impact that cultural inclusion in sports clubs has on wider society. It's an initiative under non-partisan organisation Welcoming Australia, conducting programs for clubs to embrace sport and recreation as a path to inclusion.
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