Restoring Dignity and Self-Respect: Street Soccer Mexico. A.C.
Image credit: Street Soccer Mexico A
The green, white and red of the Mexican team is a familiar sight on the pitches at the Homeless World Cup. However Street Soccer Mexico didn’t have its beginnings in Central America but further north, in Canada.
Working at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto in the early 2000s Daniel Copto (now CEO and President of Street Soccer Mexico) started a football league in the city for the benefit of some of the people he was treating. “I saw the way playing football helped them and decided to take a team of players to the Homeless World Cup in Edinburgh in 2005,” he explains.
Before, they were struggling with the ideas of drug usage but after they were called to that national squad, they start thinking of getting well, getting stronger, practising and all thoughts of using went out of their head.”
This was a turning point for Daniel. The whole idea of being part of a team was achieving more than he had been accomplishing with those he had been treating in his office.
Image credit: Street Soccer Mexico A.C.
“It was amazing - priceless,” he recalls. “Then I spoke to Mel Young. Mexico wasn’t participating [in the Homeless World Cup] back then so I asked him to allow me to start a team in Mexico and moved back home.”
Up to this point Daniel had been living comfortably in Canada, with a good job and lifestyle, and returning to Mexico meant starting over. Along with three others, they began to grow the organisation, working to use football as a tool for change, keeping participants away from drugs, the streets and unhealthy lifestyles, while restoring their dignity and self-respect.
In 2006, Mexico took part in the tournament in Cape Town, South Africa. The following year, ahead of Copenhagen 2007, the first state selection tournament in the community of Tuxtilla was run as a pilot programme. In 2008, Street Soccer Mexico was legally established as a non-profit civil association. With limited financial resources, four Mexican states were able to participate in the state tournaments ahead of the Homeless World Cup that year in Melbourne, Australia.
Then, in 2009, Street Soccer Mexico and Fundación Telmex [a philanthropic organisation connected to the country’s telecommunications companies] joined forces to organise social soccer tournaments in eight states, leading to the formation of a national team to represent the country that year in Milan.
In 2010, given the social impact achieved, the project expanded to include the whole Mexican Republic with nearly 6,500 people from 32 states participating that year.
“We remain, however, a very small organisation, still just four staff,” Daniel explains. “We do now have a budget from Fundación Telmex which allows us to coordinate the whole programme across the whole country.
“We make partnerships all over Mexico where we join with organisations working with youth at very different levels. We have some recovery programmes, work with some institutions, basically reaching out to the neighbourhoods in each state - they know exactly where the violence and drugs are - to reach the population we want to target.
We invite them to participate in our tournaments, explain about state and national tournaments and, since they like football, it’s easy for them to get motivated to participate.”
Image credit: Street Soccer Mexico A.C.
The organisation’s intention is that by participating in these events, the experience will help young people develop a different perspective from the one they’ve been socially taught.
“Twenty years ago it was a little challenging to engage people,” says Daniel, “but now we have empowered so many people in the community, those who participated in the programme before, to go back to their communities, relate the life stories of those players in the national squad to inspire others to follow in their footsteps.”
Every year Street Soccer Mexico engages with 28,000 people across the country and has partnerships with organisations in all 32 states where they engage with groups who are working with youth at risk, so building a bridge to get them to the services they need.
The green, white and red of the Mexican team is a familiar sight on the pitches at the Homeless World Cup. However Street Soccer Mexico didn’t have its beginnings in Central America but further north, in Canada.
Working at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto in the early 2000s Daniel Copto (now CEO and President of Street Soccer Mexico) started a football league in the city for the benefit of some of the people he was treating. “I saw the way playing football helped them and decided to take a team of players to the Homeless World Cup in Edinburgh in 2005,” he explains.
Before, they were struggling with the ideas of drug usage but after they were called to that national squad, they start thinking of getting well, getting stronger, practising and all thoughts of using went out of their head.”
This was a turning point for Daniel. The whole idea of being part of a team was achieving more than he had been accomplishing with those he had been treating in his office.
Image credit: Street Soccer Mexico A.C.
“It was amazing - priceless,” he recalls. “Then I spoke to Mel Young. Mexico wasn’t participating [in the Homeless World Cup] back then so I asked him to allow me to start a team in Mexico and moved back home.”
Up to this point Daniel had been living comfortably in Canada, with a good job and lifestyle, and returning to Mexico meant starting over. Along with three others, they began to grow the organisation, working to use football as a tool for change, keeping participants away from drugs, the streets and unhealthy lifestyles, while restoring their dignity and self-respect.
In 2006, Mexico took part in the tournament in Cape Town, South Africa. The following year, ahead of Copenhagen 2007, the first state selection tournament in the community of Tuxtilla was run as a pilot programme. In 2008, Street Soccer Mexico was legally established as a non-profit civil association. With limited financial resources, four Mexican states were able to participate in the state tournaments ahead of the Homeless World Cup that year in Melbourne, Australia.
Then, in 2009, Street Soccer Mexico and Fundación Telmex [a philanthropic organisation connected to the country’s telecommunications companies] joined forces to organise social soccer tournaments in eight states, leading to the formation of a national team to represent the country that year in Milan.
In 2010, given the social impact achieved, the project expanded to include the whole Mexican Republic with nearly 6,500 people from 32 states participating that year.
“We remain, however, a very small organisation, still just four staff,” Daniel explains. “We do now have a budget from Fundación Telmex which allows us to coordinate the whole programme across the whole country.
Words: Isobel Irvine