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0 viewsFollowing South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup, the ‘Football for Hope’ movement, led by FIFA and ‘Streetfootballworld’ has emerged in the country as “a movement that uses the power of the game for positive social change” and aims to harness the power of football to contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, according to FIFA’s mission statement. It is the umbrella organisation for various initiatives that have been set up to support and help children in informal settlements develop through sport.
20 Centres for 2010 was the official campaign for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The aim is to achieve positive social change through football by building 20 Football for Hope Centres for public health, education and football across Africa. The centres are addressing local social challenges in disadvantaged areas and helping to improve education and health services for young people, and leaving a tangible social legacy for Africa. As it stands, five centres have opened in South Africa, Mali, Kenya, Lesotho and Namibia. Twelve more centres are under development with all 20 Football for Hope Centres hoping to be completed by 2013.
Grassroots Soccer, founded in 2001, received support from FIFA to further develop their programme. The FIFA World Cup 2010 offers a unique opportunity for sport-for-development organizations like Grassroots Soccer (GRS) to highlight the power of soccer as an educational tool and raise the world’s awareness of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given its proven success using football as a tool for social development, GRS has become a member of the Streetfootballworld Network, and therefore a strong contributor to the ‘Football for Hope’ movement.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxPhj5Y9Cpw
Grassroots Soccer uses sport to educate inspire and mobilize children, focusing on stopping the spread of HIV. The centre, the first of the 20 to be opened, runs three curriculums for different genders and ages. Skills Street is their all girl programme and runs after school, Generation Skills is the centre’s mixed gender high school programme and runs within the schools and Skills 1.1 is implemented in primary schools.
The most recent testing sessions for ‘Skills Street’ were held in the areas of Khayelitsha and Nyanga, where out of 190 girls (aged 13-16), only four tested positive. Andrew Durkin explains how Grassroots Soccer fully supports the girls who test HIV Positive with their referral system. They build a bridge between their families and the centre, set up clinical appointments and give them full access to a site social worker to ensure the girls “know that Skills Street and Grassroots Soccer are still and will always be with them”, says Durkin.
“Grassroots Soccer creates and builds its own community itself”, says Durkin, by recruiting their coaches and volunteers from the surrounding areas and leaving their facilities open to the public once the centre has closed.
Another successful organisation, and part of the Streetfootballworld Network, to emerge from the FIFA World Cup is ‘Whizzkids United’. Whizzkids United have a unique programme that there mission states explains is “designed to promote and sustain healthy behaviour change amongst youth”. The programme has four steps, namely, engagement, celebration, re-inforcement and long-term support. The 16 hour life-skills curriculum uses football as the ‘language of instruction’ and the life-skills trainers actively engage the children, drawing analogies between football and life and thus illustrate important life lessons but in a fun, interactive environment. At WhizzKids United, their mission statement stats that their hope is that “children come away from the course empowered with the knowledge, skills and self-efficacy they need to practise healthy behaviour”.
SCORE, a non-profit organization involved in community development through sport, is another organisation, amongst several, that set up a special programme in light of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The SCORE Cup was developed to bring the excitement generated by the 2010 FIFA World Cup to deprived areas where SCORE operates. Designed in discussion with these community sports leaders, the SCORE Cup saw 32 mixed teams drawn to represent one of the 2010 FIFA World Cup nations. In all participating communities, these 32 teams mirrored the daily match schedule of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and led up to the Final Tournament of the SCORE Cup on the 26th of June, 2010.
A variety of short-term events also occurred in light of the World Cup, one particular success was ‘The Football for Hope Festival’, which took in the last week of the World Cup, in Alexandra (township) in Johannesburg, and involved more than 32 mixed teams of boys and girls from five continents. Participants were selected by recognition of their personal commitment to the work of their home organisations.
FIFA World Cup 2010 highlighted the importance and impact of football. It also gave South Africa the chance to unearth its football talent. Shona Khona – meaning “Go for it” – is a youth soccer development initiative started three years ago to develop role models among South African school children. The programme gives youngsters between the ages of 10 and 16 the chance to take part in training camps through competitions involving specifically marked household products made by Reckitt Benckiser. They SMS the lucky number found on the packaging, and numbers are drawn which allocate the winners to a training camp closest to their cities or towns. Regional camps are held in 20 different locations across the country. The most talented players are selected at each camp by South African Football Association (SAFA) coaches and get to attend a national Shona Khona weekend soccer and life-skills camp, which takes place in July each year.
One particularly exciting success story is 12 year old Tyroane Sandows who, after being selected to go to Brazil, impressed Sao Paulo’s coaches so much that he has been signed to a three-year contract with the club. After the three years, Sandows will be re-evaluated, with the possible opportunity of being able to join the senior section of the club’s academy, meaning he would then be eligible to begin the process of becoming a professional soccer player in accordance with Fifa guidelines.
www.grassrootssoccer.org; www.whizzkidsunited.org; www.safa.net GRSGRS; www.fifa.com; www.streetfootballworld.org
Video: Programme Leader, ‘Popie’