Last minute goals, amazing saves, fantastic moves, heartbreak and elation (sometimes both in the course of the same match) – World Cup 2014 continues to thrill. For fans everywhere, the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat leave little time to consider the journey World Cup players have made to star on soccer's largest stage. Many arose from such dismal origins it is amazing that they survived childhood, let alone continued to play and excel at soccer.
Brazil’s Marcelo, one of the best defenders in the world, came from such a poor background that he almost quit playing to work to support his family.
Marcelo has much to be thankful for after escaping poverty in Brazil (Photo: @BrazilStats | Twitter)
Marcelo is not alone. Ecuador’s team suits up ten of its twenty-three players from the province of Esmeraldas, a place so impoverished that it has only five regulation soccer fields for its 37 professional and amateur teams. With few fields, games often take place on the shores of the Pacific; when the tide comes in, the pitch turns into a mud-slick. The main soccer stadium boasts a grass field, although it is full of weeds and the locker room has no water.
The players and teams at the World Cup are not alone in their experiences. Worldwide, children struggle to continue playing the beautiful game - not because of lack of talent, but due to lack of safe playing opportunities. Imagine playing games barefoot in trash dumps, on highway medians or between cars in busy streets; chasing down an out-of-bounds ball from a waste dump or prohibited area; walking through dangerous neighborhoods rife with drugs, gangs and violenceto just to kick the ball around with friends. Unfortunately, for many, these situations are reality.
Looking to provide safe soccer playing experiences to these children is love.fútbol. Founded in 2006, the organization mobilizes impoverished and underserved communities in Brazil and Guatemala to build low-maintenance and durable soccer fields. love.fútbol provides the materials and the technical expertise for building the fields, while the communities must donate the land, plan the project, provide the labor and maintain the fields. Not only do the children end up with a safe place to play soccer, the community is empowered by its efforts in planning and building its own soccer fields.
Thus far, love.fútbol has sponsored sixteen projects, including Complexo do Alemão in one of Rio’s most notorious slums and Aldair Fagundes in Foz do Iguaçu, a city with the highest adolescent homicide rate in the country.
@lovefutbol / @lovefutbolBR project #15 in Itaquera, S. Paulo, Brazil is about to be inaugurated! Exciting day! pic.twitter.com/CMvR6mWNqz
— love.fútbol (@lovefutbol) June 12, 2014
Is it working? Follow-up analysis shows a resounding YES! Eighty-three percent of parents and school directors reported better academic performance, 70% of parents reported decreased drug abuse and gang involvement, 67% of adults reported higher economic growth and 98 % of children reported playing more sports. As of June 2013, 11,800 children and 23,000 beneficiaries were impacted.
More important than the numbers, the communities have endorsed love.fútbol’s mission. Following completion of a project in Såo Lourenço, Brazil, eight year-old Lucas noted that “from now on, I won’t need to jump in the sewer to catch the ball…we are going to play everyday until midnight!” Community members involved with the project added that, “people are participating more actively in [the] community’s social life…they now believe in themselves,” “today is one of the happiest moments of my life,” and “the reform of the field created…a reform of the friendships in the community; the project helped to awake a sleeping giant!”
Community members see an immediate impact from love.futbol's work - especially kids (Photo: @lovefutbol | Twitter)
love.fútbol’s positive impact reverberates through communities around the world, as international superstars Hernanes, Marta, David Luiz, Graham Zusi and Clarence Goodson are all campaigning on behalf of the organization.
Superstars from across nations support love.futbol's mission (Photo: @lovefutbol | Twitter)
Not one to lose momentum, love.fútbol’s goals for 2014 include seven new projects to provide 7,000-10,000 Brazilian children safe places to play soccer, five new staff hires and five fully-funded, corporate-sponsored projects. Ambitious? Yes, but to a group that has yet to let anything stand in its way, highly probable.
To learn more and support this great cause, visit www.lovefutbol.org.
