Their beautiful journey to victory
Posted by Russia - 04/03/2007
At its street paper project and night shelter "Put domoj" works with a small percentage of the estimated 45, 000 homeless people in St. Petersburg. Homelessness in Russia arises due to people losing homes from real estate speculations, alcohol abuse or they are driven into illegality by the "propiska" system, a Soviet law that allows the state to deprive people of almost all civic rights if they are not officially registered in their city of residence.
Money and jobs are concentrated in a few Russian cities like Moscow, St.Petersburg, Novosibirsk, yet here it is almost impossible to acquire a "propiska." Without one it is difficult to rent an appartment, impossible to get an official job and the threat of arrest and deportation hovers constantly.
Since 2003 "Put Domoj" has developed a small street soccer program to combat some of these problems. Players are drawn together from street paper vendors and other social projects. The positive draw of participation in the Homeless World Cup tournament overseas has motivated and enabled projects to develop further. It has significantly raised their profile and brought additional sponsors to invest in the programmes enabling more players to be supported by enhanced training schedules.
So it was with the support of the Homeless World Cup and an invaluable group of Russian based sponsors such as Nike and the Region Insurance Company that the first National Russian Championship for homeless people was successfully held at the start of June 2006. At the legendary Metrostroy stadium in St.Petersburg 8 teams from different projects around Russia were united to play for the Russian cup.
For Arkady Tjurin, editor in chief, The Way Home, the championship represented another huge step forward for street soccer and social inclusion in Russia: "Homelessness is currently a taboo and just does not exist for the majority of people in our country. So our main task now is to raise awareness and change the public consciousness so this problem can be addressed."
The tournament achieved just this: 10 TV stations, including two national channels, 6 radio stations and 15 newspapers covered the championship and the issues of homelessness for the first time.
It was only fitting that the Russian's went on to win another victory at the Cape Town 2006 Homeless World Cup. They are true champions of life and in football.
