www.streethandball.org Description of Street Handball Organization The history of Team Handball in short Team handball was invented in Northern Europe in the late 19th century. But as far back as medieval France and amongst the Inuit’s of Greenland records tell of handball-like games. However the rules and structures of the game were not established until Danish public school teacher Holger Nielsen drew up a set of rules in 1906. Nielsen – a gym teacher – used the rules in his Physical Education Classes. However Germany was the first nation to truly organize competitive Team Handball and the first international men’s game between Germany and Belgium was played in Germany in 1925. Five years later the first female international game was played between Germany and Austria. In 1936 the game was introduced as a discipline at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Back then the game was played outdoors, but in the following decades the game flourished as an indoor activity. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich the game remerged as team handball now an indoor sport. Today the international Finals of team handball enjoy great popularity in Europe. But despite the popularity, handball is practically never played outside the organized frames of the handball clubs. This is presumably because team handball is dependant on a sports centre, a set of standardized goals, balls and the correct lines on the playing area. Renting a sports centre is a costly affair and often it is not even an option. To newcomers the rules often appear complicated and the physical nature of the game even intimidating. These aspects and many more have the undesirable side effect that it deters numerous potential players even from trying team handball and make the game appeal mainly to athletes. Street Handball Organisation was created to solve these challenges! A new game with a mission Street Handball Organization (SHO) is an autonomous non-political and financially independent organisation which is solely guided by a set of values. The team behind SHO is Lasse Boesen of the Danish national team and the German Handball Bundesliga club SG Flensburg Handewitt and former elite trainers and players Ole B. Andersen and Torben Sorensen. I 2008 the trio meet to develop a new team handball game with the right ingredients consisting of the framework, values and activities to spread the game of team handball and reaching out to the young people that normally would not be attracted to the game. To achieve this goal it is SHOs belief that the public schools play a key part. By introducing handball at an early age through the schools we hope to secure and develop the multiplicity of the game.