MissiOnLine.org (Extra) ordinary stories of sport and solidarity When football benefits life soccer, Fifa World Cup, Africa, football Yesterday, like today, in many contexts of poverty, decay and violence, the sport of football proved to be an extraordinary tool of education and reconciliation. We explore this phenomenon as we take a trip around Africa

Antony Suze has the wide and disarming smile of a person who has seen the bottom of the barrel and knows that it is possible to get out. Even by playing a game. Football and freedom are the two strongholds of his existence. Freedom for his people, black South Africans oppressed by Apartheid. Freedom denied in the Robben Island prison where he was held for 15 years, along with thousands of other political activists.
And then there is football, which makes his eyes shine the same way. The liberty to kick around a cloth soccer ball, achieved after four years of requests fallen on deaf ears: a few minutes per week to give vent to energies and passion which piecemeal turn into a team, a tournament and finally a proper competitive league, the Makana Football Association. Complete with rules, protests and appeals. And a stadium-worthy fan base. “[It’s] more than just a game”, says Antony Suze at the end of the docu-fiction in which he stars together with other former inmates of Robben Island.  Much more than a simple game. “Because football gave us a reason to resist. A reason to survive. And to affirm our dignity as human beings”, tells us “Tony” who today still preserves the enthusiasm of that young talented football player, together with the wisdom of the person who has experienced many things but is still able to look forward with optimism.  
If one looks just beyond the hyperbolic image of football-as-business, that of millionaire football players and of marketing to the extreme, there are many stories similar to, and even less extraordinary than Antony Suze’s. Even in South Africa, where there are the experience of the national team comprised of homeless people, which won the World Cup in 2009 in Milan, or Project Football for Hope, which provides the construction of ten communitarian gathering grounds in townships. They all talk about football as something still very much tied to the issues of education and solidarity.

And then there are the infinite everyday stories of young boys who, in the most disparate regions of Africa, kick around a football. Perhaps dreaming about becoming a champion while avoiding becoming who knows who: thief or soldier, homeless child or criminal. In many corners of Africa, misery and decay make the children grow up too fast. Necessity sharpens their wits and exposes them to exploitation. A large number of minors – boys and girls – are victims of exploitation, in agriculture as well as housework, in small businesses and in prostitution. Therefore, football may become an instrument of amusement and education, of asserting one’s rights and the capability to stay together. Maybe even for a better future.
In Africa, positive experiences abound. Most of them are so intimately and spontaneously part of these young people’s lives that they go almost unnoticed. You can see them playing everywhere, sometimes in the most improbable places, in a square or on a traffic island, in the desert or at the border of the forest. Playing with a passion that supersedes everything else. In that moment it seems that nothing else exists.
Those who are involved in sports and education know that very well. It’s nothing new, in many ways. Just think of the ten-year history of CSI in Italy, born under that inspiration as far back as 1944. Yet it is always something to be rediscovered. In Africa a serious investment in sport education has been made during recent years. And many things are still to be done.

Serena Borsani is an example of how it is possible to combine theory and practice. A volunteer for Coe in Kafue, Zambia, she carried out a research project on sport as a tool of reconciliation in the Rift Valley in Kenya after the post-election clashes of 2008 and she is an expert on the use of sport for development and peace. “Here in Zambia – she says – we tried to combine sport and teaching with an active approach promoting abilities “of life” and “for life”; that is, developing positive attitudes in the interaction with others and in the relation with one’s own social circle”.
This program came to fruition with the Football League, now in its second year. It consists of sixteen teams in four different locations, with more than 1200 participants--480 girls among them-- divided into categories ranging from small children to under 20. They’ve named it “Never give up” with the idea of promoting a positively combative approach to life, school, and daily challenges. “It aims to be a motto against a certain fatalism – Serena says -, against the widespread acceptance of situations of poverty and injustice, perceived as an inevitable destiny”.
Thanks to the Football League, “many children and young people may challenge each other, have fun, learn how to win and lose, commit themselves to a common goal, train for a better result”. A key figure of this whole process is the coach. “As always,” Serena says, “choosing people is essential: during practices, as a matter of fact, the coaches have the difficult task of not limiting themselves to simply putting a ball on the pitch but they also have to present themselves as positive role models, offering the young people, in a recreational way, necessary information for making conscious choices for their future. It is a holistic approach which envisages children’s direct participation, most of whom come from backgrounds of extreme poverty”.
Hence, football is used as a binding agent to attract young people and to achieve not only athletic goals. Serena provides some examples: “From conflict resolution to a better knowledge of the most common and dangerous illnesses like Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis; from an improved recovery ability after a serious trauma to keeping teenagers away from the wrong circles because of the high unemployment; from learning skills which allow the kids to face everyday challenges to teaching them responsibility in building social relations…”
In the last decade the basic values of sport have been recognized even by the international community as very important factors for the establishment of a stronger civil society. Even the United Nations, large athletic associations, governments and universities are creating new forms of collaboration between organizations and institutions that share the goal of giving young people a chance more of education.
An example of this comes from the Ivory Coast where UN peacekeepers built and inaugurated in December 2009 a football field in Trainou village, close to Bouaké, precisely at the border between the government area and the area controlled by the New Forces. “Knowing how important football is in the Ivory Coast – Major Tashfees states – we wanted to give young people the opportunity to occupy themselves with healthy activities through the sport”. Village heads of Trainou 1 and Trainou 2 are enthusiastic: “Our young people will be less idle and they will be able to organize tournaments to have fun and strengthen social cohesion”.
This is not the first instance of this in the Ivory Coast: in the politically and socially afflicted country the UN mission has already built different structures in order to favour football and other sports as a tool for supporting the peace process.
In Cameroon, programs have been implemented instead at the grassroots level, and with a very wide involvement. For example, the Centre Sportif Camerounais (Cameroon Sporting Centre, Csc), established in 1998 from the cooperation between the NGO Centro Orientamento Educati (COE) and the Italian Sporting Centre. In 2001 this entity was joined by the project Inter Campus, aiming at the technical training of coaches following pedagogical methodologies and at the social integration of children coming from isolated or emarginated areas. With these projects come stories of difficult setbacks but also of successes. Last September, in fact, Cameroonian boys won – first equal with the Iranian team – the first World Cup of Inter Campus which brought more than 300 children from 19 different countries to Tuscany, Italy. Meanwhile, last February a training course was held for the first time in the north of Cameroon, in Garoua, one of the poorest regions of the country. This course involved about 60 local coaches at the Maison des Jeunes of Coe discussing football didactics.
And for Father Maurizio Bezzi, Pime’s missionary, fond of football in addition to being an educator  it was impossible not to recognize the importance of sport in rehabilitating Yaoundé street children, with whom he has worked for many years. Thus, among the myriad of activities that keep him busy, there is one that he never misses: Tuesday morning’s football match. Father Maurizio is sure that sport is not only an instrument for getting people together. Rather, he uses it also as a method of selection. Indeed, he lets not only his street children play but potential educators as well. “To the young people who want to work with me – father Maurizio explains –  I propose first of all to come and play football on Saturday mornings for four weeks. In this way I can assess their capacity to deal with the children, to manage tensions and possible brawls. If they pass this test, they are accepted; then we continue to train together”.
Among his boys, there is even one nicknamed Roger Milla. His speciality is not dribbling on the football pitch but amidst the market stands where he used to practice his main activity: tufinga or purse-snatching. That is, until he was stabbed in the back with a knife. Today Roger Milla is no longer the bag-snatching and dribbling king but at least he is alive and he walks with the help of a crutch. A similar experience is recounted by Father Kizito Sesana, a Combonian missionary in Nairobi, Kenya, who created out of thin air and in a completely informal way a tiny team of street children: “[It is] a way to take these boys off the streets and teach them some cohabitation rules through a very popular and loved sport like football.” the missionary tells. Except that Yasset Football Club –the name of the team – unexpectedly came from behind in every round of the tournament they took part in, to the point that they won the first division’s championship. “We could have competed in a higher division – father Kizito says – but we chose to stop at that point both for economic reasons and because of the risk of losing the sense of this experience which was first and foremost for educational value”.
But to prove that success does not necessarily go to one’s head is the story of a boy from Sierra Leone: from soldier-child to football player for Manchester United. Christian Caulker, 21, has recently been hired by the well-known English club. But behind him there is a story of violence, drug, abuse. A Saverian Italian missionary, father Giuseppe Berton, who has been in Sierra Leone for 40 years, found him wounded in the street in Freetown. He welcomed him in his Family Home in Freetown, a residence for former child soldiers and street children. It was precisely through Family Home’s football team that Christian discovered his talent. From there he went to the F.C. Kallon, a team founded by and named for the former Inter football player. Then, in recent months, he was hired by Manchester United. “Half of the my first year’s salary will be donated to the Family Home – Christian declared – that helped me wake up from a nightmare, allowing me to live as a Christian”. Even football, at times, performs miracles…