Christmas in one of the Barka communities | |
|
Everyone wins: The Homeless World Cup
The Homeless World Cup took place from to July 26 to August 1 in Gothenburg in Sweden. 26 national teams from all over the world attended this event. The World Cup started with a parade through the center of the city. From the beginning to the end there was a really great atmosphere. The spirit of friendship, joy and enthusiasm accompanied all the participants. The winners together with those who lost sang, danced, congratulated each other and exchanged the T-shirts.
The Street Soccer World Cup or the Homeless World Cup is a unique sporting event because the competitors are not professional sportsmen but people who play football just for fun. Each of the players has a difficult life experience: homelessness, addiction to alcohol or drugs, violence, crime, family conflicts. These people have been rejected and live on the margins of society. The World Cup gave them an experience of being accepted - they represented their countries in the international meeting. Before each match they shouted the name of their country. On the last day before each match we listened to the national anthems of each team. Everyone said that it was a very special moment.
In Gothenburg you could not recognize who was homeless and who was, for example, a journalist. The young men had a chance to live as they want to live, even if it was only for a week. For most of them it was one of the most important events in their life. After coming back, one of them shared with other colleagues who live with him in the shelter, that during his life he did a lot of harm to his family, he drank and reached rock bottom of his life. When you are at the bottom, it is difficult to do something good. In the World Cup he performed well and his team became third. All of them received medals and for him this medal is a sign that he is able to do good things. He is going to give this medal to his son.
I work with the homeless and I know how difficult it is to engage them in doing anything, to discipline and build friendship between them. In Gothenburg this came very easily. The boys sacrificed everything: pleasure, sightseeing, etc. They went to bed early and did a lot of exercises - all only in order to win. I was surprised how they were obedient to their coach.
The idea to organize this World Cup came in 2001 in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa during the annual meeting of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) which is an umbrella organization for all the street papers through the world. A street paper is a magazine which is not being sold in shops but is distributed only by homeless or long term unemployed people. Half of the price goes to them as a salary and the second half is for the editors. INSP has over 50 members from 29 countries. They work together to support one another and to create new projects.
In Cape Town they thought about what they might do to integrate not only the street paper editors but also the distributors. Those people are poorly educated and they can not speak foreign languages. Then they saw a football match on TV and it gave them the idea that those distributors also play football and street soccer could be a common language for them. The INSP created an international street soccer tournament in Graz, Austria in 2003. The event was so successful that they agreed to organize it every year. In 2005 the competition will take place in New York.
Parallel to the matches in Gothenburg there was a Social Forum, where some organizations working with homeless people were presented. I represented the Mutual Help Foundation “Barka” from Poland. There were also NGOs from Sweden, Denmark, USA, Kenya, Brazil and FEANTSA (the European Federation of National Associations Working with the Homeless) and of course INSP.
It was a privilege for me to attend this event because I could see the change in these young men's lives. It gave them an experience of normality and gave all of us hope. In Gothenburg I could see that sport can play an important role for social integration and personal development, which are among the main goals in my work.
“Barka”
I work for a project called the Centre of Social Integration run by the Mutual Help Foundation, “Barka”. "Barka" means "barge", but more meaningfully, "a boat where every wrecked person can come in and survive." The goal is to prepare long term unemployed people, homeless, recovered alcoholics and drug addicts for work. This project runs 10 vocational workshops: bookbinding and printing, sewing, gastronomy, general construction, plumbing and welding, carpentry, a workshop for taking care of children and disabled persons, housekeeping, trading courses/ and classes of general education /methods of actively looking for work, ethics and culture, lessons about the social situation in Poland and Europe, entrepreneurship, computer skills, foreign languages: English and German. 
There are also psychological groups which help develop personal skills.
If you wish to know more, please see our web-page www.barka.org.pl (available in English).
