Uniendo Lazos con el Fútbol (Uniting Social Ties Through Soccer)
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Gamechangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport competition.
To incorporate girls participation, achieve gender equality and promote leadership and conflict resolution using the Soccer for Peace methodology.
About You
Contact Information
Title
Ms.
First name
Alejandra
Last name
Molina
Your job title
Programs and Grants Manager
Name of your organization
Give to Colombia
Organization type
NGO
Annual budget/currency
USD $255,063.58
Location
Project Street Address
Carrera. 59 No. 74 -51
Project City
Barranquilla
Project Province/State
El Atlántico
Project Postal/Zip Code
N/A
Project Country
Colombia
Your idea
Choose your sport: (check all that apply)
Soccer/Football
If you chose "other" for Sport, please define in 1-2 words below
What approach does your initiative incorporate?
Knowledge/educational materials
Year the initiative began (yyyy)
2007
Paste your video code here:
If your project has a website, paste the web address here:
Plot your innovation within the discovery framework:
Barrier
Perception shapes the future
Insight
Let girls lead
This field has not been completed. (333 words or less)
Name Your Project
Uniendo Lazos con el Fútbol (Uniting Social Ties Through Soccer)
Describe Your Idea
To incorporate girls participation, achieve gender equality and promote leadership and conflict resolution using the Soccer for Peace methodology.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
To incorporate girls participation, achieve gender equality and promote leadership and conflict resolution using the Soccer for Peace methodology.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit?
In 2009, FCC will benefit 1000 girls by helping them to address common conditions in their lives, such as domestic violence, poverty, and gender discrimination. FCC teaches girls and their families to tackle these issues, through the Soccer for Peace methodology, and to become an alternative example of how boys and girls can be equals in their communities. By 2014, FCC aims to work 50 neighborhoods, and directly impact 14,000 children, with a target ratio of 1 to 1 between boys and girls.
Do you have any existing partnerships? If so, please list and describe.
NUTRIR FOUNDATION: Implements the nutrition component of the initiative, enabling the evaluation of how nutrition affects the impact of the program; •FATHER CYRILUS ORGANIZATION and the HIGH COUNCIL FOR NACIONAL REINTEGRATION: Donated land and is providing funds, respectively, to construct soccer fields in target neighborhoods; •GIVE TO COLOMBIA: Assist with international fundraising, and works closely with the initiative to conduct impact measurements, project evaluations and specialized monitoring support; •LA PAZ POLICE: Enables a community-level sense of security within the project neighborhood, and protects the program facilities and physical safety of the staff and participating children; •COMMUNITY INTEGRATION COMMITTEE: Facilitates the incorporation of local social issues into the program curriculum and promotes community awareness of the initiative; •PARENTS: Incorporate gender equality and peaceful conflict resolution values into the family and community fabrics.
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Citizen sector (non profits, NGOs) , Private sector , Public sector (government).
How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
The initiative is executed by Fundación Fútbol con Corazón (FCC), which has been operating in Barranquilla since 2007. To implement the program, FCC selects girls based on their family needs, school enrollment, and family engagement to participate for one year. They attend soccer practices twice a week and commit to the Soccer for Peace methodology that teaches tolerance, respect, cooperation and solidarity. Girls receive two meals per day and close nutritional monitoring, proper sports gear, and participate in weekly education workshops with their families that address: gender misconceptions and barriers, social and family values, and development questions for young and adolescent girls. They also compete in weekly competitions and bi-weekly games on integrated boy and girl teams, during which each team’s first goal has to be scored by a girl and there is no referee because the children have committed to finding ways of peacefully solving their differences on the field.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact
Transforming the behavior and quality of life for girls and families, to promote gender equality in marginalized neighborhoods in Barranquilla.
What does impact/success look like? Please list any tangible measures of the impact of your innovation
The objectives of the program are to: 1) remove girls from situations of violence, drugs, and gangs; and 2) promote social cohesion, tolerance and peaceful conflict resolution. Success, within 24-36 months, is envisioned as:
•Achieving a 1-1 ratio of girls to boys in the program
•Healthy nutrition reports and provision of vitamins, inoculations, dental fillings/cleaning
•100% school attendance rates
•8.5 hours per week of positive and productive use of leisure time
•Higher levels of self-confidence and leadership skills
•Demonstration of honesty, tolerance, solidarity and respect as conflict resolution skills.
Impact indicators include: quarterly evaluations of the girls and their families; assessments of their progress through weekly game evaluation forms; psychological and nutrition tests; school attendance reports; reduction in reported rates of family violence and abuse to local authorities; number of participants who enroll in higher education or technical studies.
Is there a chance that your project could change policy (within an institution or government)?
Over the long term, the impact of the program will act as a benchmark to inform and influence policy changes regarding strategies to promote gender equality and non-violent conflict resolution. Currently, there are policies and governmental programs that promote sports in low-income and vulnerable communities in Colombia; however, most of them lack a gender-specific component or objective. By documenting the achievements of the Uniendo Lazos con el Fútbol program, G2C, in coordination with FCC, will be able to demonstrate the positive and effective impact of the Soccer for Peace methodology on generating gender equality, as well as peaceful strategies for conflict resolution.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow the initiative or expand your intended impact?
By strengthening the capacity of its community relationships, the initiative will broaden its response to specific neighborhood’s needs through gender equality and peaceful conflict resolution principles. Thus, the program will decrease gender discrimination in everyday activities beyond sports, and empower girls to achieve higher levels of education and equal access to socio-economic opportunities. It will also generate a sense of community ownership and activism in support of the program.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
Current financing includes: a start up grant (2007-2010) provided by a local association of entrepreneurs; a program specific grant from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Exito Foundation; a sponsorship program to support individual children and engage individual donors; corporate sponsorships for program soccer tournaments; and billboard advertising sales inside the foundation’s soccer courts.
Future sources of financing are: an expanded sponsorship plan to incorporate individual donors in the United States; the construction of soccer facilities in high-income neighborhoods to rent out; and the sale of contracted trainings and workshops to teach Soccer for Peace methodology to other interested entities nationally.
Financing source
Annual budget
FCC has a 2009 annual budget of USD $738,968.
Annual revenue generated
The total amount of generated revenue in 2008, the sum of FCC’s seed funding, grants, and income-generate projects, is $747,889.
Number of staff (full-time, part-time, volunteers)
FCC has eight full-time staff members who manage the organization’s operations, and eight part-time, program staff members.
What are the main barriers to financing your initiative, and how do you plan to address these barriers?
The primary barrier to financing the initiative is securing sufficient, reliable and sustainable funding sources to replace the start-up funding grant that ends in 2010. To address this obstacle, FCC is working with a local social program expert and LGT Venture Philanthropy to develop a business plan for incoming-generating projects that will finance the operation and program costs of the initiative.
What are the major challenges with regards to partnerships?
The challenge FCC currently faces is securing additional partnerships that support the income generating activities that FCC is launching as the principal component of its financial sustainability strategy. Additionally partnerships with organizations working locally have increased their demands for expanded program coverage, which in turn increases the need for additional funding so the program can reach more neighborhoods.
The Story
What stage is your project?
Ongoing project .
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to create this innovation? Tell us the story.
When Samuel Azout, FCC’s Founder, lost his childhood friend and fellow soccer player, Carlos, to the destructive forces of poverty – drugs, alcoholism, dangerous sexual activities, and violence – he understood how poverty and social abandonment had left this friend to spend his leisure time, alone, in the streets of a struggling community. Although their friendship developed on the dirt soccer fields of Carlos’ neighborhood, by the age of 15, the street, and not the field, was the common space between Carlos and Sammy. Carlos, however, was already lost and his eyes told his story – out of focus and distanced by drugs, alcohol and isolation. Soon after their last encounter, he ran away from a drug treatment center for the homeless and did not return.
As an adult, Samuel returned to Barranquilla to found FCC. Impassioned by Carlos’ friendship and tale, he decided to use soccer, the common bond between him and Carlos, to teach low-income children self-esteem, community and family values, gender equality, and a non-violent conflict resolution methodology. By unleashing the positive potential within these children, and through them, their communities, Samuel is helping to build the kind of healthy and peaceful neighborhoods that could have changed the course of Carlos’ life. By creating FCC, Samuel believes that he can help change the lives of the 140,000 boys and girls in Barranquilla, all of whom could avoid Carlos’ fate if the mentors and the means are available.
Please tell us about the social innovator behind this initiative
Samuel Azout is from Barranquilla, Colombia and has a B.S. degree in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University, and a MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Before founding FCC, he was President and CEO of Almacenes Vivero S.A., which became Carulla Vivero S.A., the second largest retailer in Colombia. Currently, Sammy is the Chairman of the Board of two Colombian NGOs, Fundación Carulla - focused on education, nutrition, and housing - and FCC.
(Optional) To be eligible for an additional prize, please select age range
13 or younger
