Football for Hope

Together, FIFA and streetfootballworld create programmes around the world that use sporting activities as a platform for enhancing dialogue and collaboration among football associations, clubs and players, professional leagues, commercial partners, and local organisations advancing social development. Selected best-practice organisations in the field of development through football receive financial support to implement locally relevant projects. Here are a few concrete examples:

• In Cambodia, Spirit of Soccer educates communities in post-conflict regions on the dangers of landmines. In 2006 over 22,000 children in Cambodia received mine-risk education from Spirit of Soccer-trained coaches through football-based activities.
• Since 2002 Colombianitos has been using football to promote education and reduce crime and drug abuse in Colombia, with a focus on boys and girls who have been affected by violence and/or extreme poverty. Their football-based programme, Goals for a Better Life, is a recreational approach to education that combines artistic and cultural elements in an effort to help young people adopt positive lifestyle habits.
• Founded in 2001, the United Kingdom (UK)'s Street League uses football in combination with education and training programmes to transform the lives of homeless and dispossessed people. It builds on the principles of inclusiveness, sustainability, and diversity, with the aim of promoting healthy lifestyles, social integration, crime reduction, non-formal education, and long-term employment.
• Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Defensores del Chaco provides opportunities created for and by young people who live in a context of uncertainty and limited opportunities. For example, the fútbol callejero (street football) method applies rules that integrate social and community values into the game.
• Kenya's Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) provides training and organises tournaments in the 16 most deprived areas of Nairobi. Approximately 20,000 young people to date have been involved in leadership training, environmental cleanups, HIV/AIDS awareness programmes, and other community service activities
• Grassroot Soccer (GRS) mobilises the global football community in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The organisation trains local role models (including professional football players) to deliver an interactive, football-themed behaviour development curriculum to young people, who are then empowered as peer educators to teach the community at large what they have learned. GRS runs its flagship projects in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Zambia, and partners with organisations in several other African countries.

Various platforms have been developed to help build capacity and connection within the football-for-development community. Running on a 4-year cycle to tie in with the FIFA Confederations Cup, the Football for Hope Forum brings practitioners and researchers together to discuss future paths and concrete solutions to challenges in the field of development through football. The forum offers practical training and provides participants with the opportunity to take part in several plenary sessions.

Also every 4 years, as an official event of the FIFA World Cup™, the Football for Hope Festival brings together those committed to football for social change. Activities include fast football on small pitches, cultural exchanges, and a welcome from the local host community.

The official campaign of the FIFA World Cup™ is called 20 Centres for 2010. The revenues from the campaign will enable at least 20 centres with sports, health, and educational facilities to be constructed across Africa. The centres will consist of a small-sized football pitch as well as facilities that will provide local communities with access to counselling, health, and education services. The Football for Hope Centres will be located on the sites of existing implementing partners, strengthening their activities in the community in order to improve basic education, prevent diseases, and promote health, as well as encourage the social integration of minorities and disadvantaged populations.

A comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system for the Football for Hope movement is being developed and implemented.

Health, HIV/AIDS, Environment, Youth, Rights.

streetfootballworld is a social profit organisation that brings together relevant actors in the field of development through football worldwide, strengthening local organisations that use the potential of football to promote and facilitate sustainable social development. The streetfootballworld network consists of around 80 of these local organisations, which are active in more than 40 countries. The idea of the network is based on the need of local organisations to become visible to potential partners and the public and gain access to existing knowledge and experience in the field. streetfootballworld therefore supports social change on a global scale through cooperation at all levels of society and a conception of partnership between economic and social entrepreneurs.

Following the United Nations (UN) appeal to industrialised countries for development financing, FIFA agreed to assign at least 0.7% of its total revenues to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, which as of 2005 are grouped under the umbrella of Football for Hope. In addition to the numerous grassroots programmes it supports, FIFA systematically uses its major competitions - including the FIFA World Cup™ - as platforms for advocacy, awareness-raising, and fundraising.