love fútbol: Engaging a Global Passion for Soccer and Youth

Children in the world’s poorest neighborhoods are alarmingly vulnerable when they play soccer alongside busy highways or in trash dumps. They often have nowhere better to play, leaving them at risk from traffic and environmental hazards, as well as from sexual predators that target children who walk long distances to reach playing areas.

After he graduated from college in the United States, Drew Chafetz set out to create solutions to this problem by co-founding love.fútbol, an organization that mobilizes communities to build safe soccer fields for kids in some of the most impoverished areas of the world.

“We consider the right to play soccer in a safe environment to be a human right,” Chafetz said. “Our vision is that all children with a passion for soccer have a safe place to play. And our goal is to engage the global passion for soccer around this issue.”

Chafetz has been an avid soccer player for as long as he can remember and has seen firsthand the lengths children will go to play. As a young child, Chafetz’s globetrotting family traveled, sometimes for months, in locations that included impoverished villages in Tibet, Brazil, and Kenya.

At a formative age, he discovered that soccer is a universal language and a powerful force for forming community bonds, especially for kids. “Kids were playing everywhere I went," he said. "They played in the streets. It was my sport too, and so we connected through the game. Soccer was how we communicated with each other. Through the game, I saw that I shared quite a bit with these kids despite our different languages and cultural backgrounds.”

But it wasn’t until a study abroad trip in college that Chafetz realized how dangerous many of the conditions were for kids who wanted to play soccer. While visiting a village in Morocco, he saw a group of children playing in a back alley that was separated by a deep trench, and the kids had to leap over it repeatedly.

“Kids have an incredible desire to play soccer, and this desire—shown by their innovation and ability to play soccer almost anywhere—is one of the most beautiful aspects of this game. But I saw that this seriously dangerous situation could be remedied by simply providing a safe place to play.” The concept for love.fútbol was born.

love.fútbol’s founders, Chafetz and his college soccer teammate, Alfredo Axtmayer, jumpstarted the organization shortly after graduating from college in 2006. Since then, they have mobilized seven communities across Guatemala to build low-maintenance, durable concrete soccer pitches, and have several additional projects in development.

love.fútbol provides the raw materials and guidance to construct soccer fields, but communities are responsible for donating land, project planning, and volunteer labor for building the field. Because a community must take ownership of the entire project, love. fútbol can ensure that demand from the community is high enough that it will continue to maintain the soccer pitch.

This community-driven development approach turns building a soccer field into an effective tool for both youth empowerment and community development. The projects generate cooperation among community members and strengthen local leaders in youth advocacy.

“love.fútbol’s core competency isn’t really building soccer fields,” Chafetz said. “It’s mobilizing and empowering communities to build their own.”

love.fútbol was recently selected as the second prize winner of the Nike and Ashoka Changemakers Changing Lives Through Football competition. As demonstrated by the more than 300 entries to the competition, organizations around the world are using soccer as a powerful tool to implement education, peace building, and health initiatives. love.fútbol distinguished itself during the competition as an entry that provides a critical first step in the process.

“The right to play, and the inherent benefits that are products of play, are not possible without first having a safe and dependable space,” Chafetz said. “We specialize in facility development through an empowerment methodology, a critical first step, so that these other organizations can concentrate on their programs and not on the facilities. love.fútbol is playing an important role in this sector by helping soccer-for-development organizations expand their work in new communities.”

Since its pilot project, love.fútbol has experienced a surge of requests to partner with other organizations. It is now working closely with streetfootballworld, a global network of soccer-for-development initiatives founded by Jürgen Griesbeck, an Ashoka Fellow.

Through the Nike Changemakers competition, love.fútbol has also connected with Brazilian soccer star and activist Raí, and is in talks to collaborate with a competition finalist, Goals for Girls, from Argentina.

“Female empowerment through football is one of our top priorities,” Chafetz said. “A partnership with an organization like Goals for Girls would ensure that girls, specifically, have the opportunity to fulfill their passion for soccer.”

love.fútbol’s participation in the Changemakers competition also motivated the organization to strengthen its own grassroots awareness campaign, called love.fútbol for All. “We worked hard to move people to vote for us. I really want to thank the love.fútbol community for stepping up, because we would not have won this without them. We were honored to be selected by Nike and Ashoka,” Chafetz said.

love.fútbol is currently in talks with streetfootballworld and Adidas to form a cause marketing partnership in preparation for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.