Homeless World Cup «

Homeless World Cup

Street Football Aotearoa is the official New Zealand partner of the Homeless World Cup, a life changing international football tournament.

What is the Homeless World Cup?

The Homeless World Cup is both an annual global football tournament and a support structure to develop grassroots football projects for socially excluded people year-round.

The Homeless World Cup Foundation uses football to encourage and energise people who are homeless to change their own lives. Currently it works with football programmes in over 70 nations, reaching 40,000 homeless players every year, with the ambition to engage one million players with the benefits of football by 2012.

The unique success of the Homeless World Cup is the positive association health, wellbeing, and developing people’s individual strengths and skills while addressing poverty and disadvantage on an international stage.

The Homeless World Cup consistently leads to over 70% of players significantly improving their lives through employment, housing, education, and drug and alcohol treatment programmes.

Team New Zealand

New Zealand had a successful first tournament in Melbourne 2008; the team was awarded the Best Newcomers trophy and as ambassadors for New Zealand made friends and fans from around the world. TVNZ’s Close Up programme followed the team’s progress before and during the tournament. This is the first of their two reports and focuses on the selection of the team and the build up to the trip…

The second report follows the team’s progress in Melbourne…

All of the players who represented New Zealand at the 2008 Homeless World Cup have moved into more stable accommodation and made positive changes in their lives. One player has completed an alcohol rehabilitation programme and started university, another received an award for his volunteer work, and three others are now in stable employment.

Rio 2010

In September 2010, thanks to the generous support of a number of organisations and individuals, eight homeless people had the opportunity to represent New Zealand at the 8th Homeless World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The team manager was Katie Owen and the coach Steve Fletcher, an experienced coach and referee from Auckland. For additional support, social worker Gabor Radak from Christchurch City Mission and Street Football trustees Tom Kelly and Kate Amore accompanied the team.

To read about the experience in more depth please download the ful report here or click on the image below: