STREET CHILD WORLD CUP MARCH 2010
 
Deloitte Street Child World Cup
Winning rights
I know from personal experience just what power football can have to inspire and change young people’s lives, whatever their background or nationality. This is what the Deloitte Street Child World Cup is all about and I give it my full support.
David Beckham OBE
Situation
Millions of children around the world have to survive by living on the street where they experience violence and abuse, all too often by those entrusted to protect them. The level of abuse can often be higher around major sporting events, as host authorities seek to “clean up” the streets with enforced round ups. For many street children, football provides the only moment when they can escape the stigma of being a street child and play like other children.
No child should have to live on the streets. I commend the Street Child World Cup for providing a platform for the rights of street children to be heard.
Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister
Project
The inaugural Deloitte Street Child World Cup will take place in Durban, South Africa from 12th - 22nd March 2010. It will provide a platform for street children from eight countries to tell their stories and raise the issues which matter most to them with the worldwide media, invited policy makers and figures from the world of football and the arts. This event will create a Street Child ‘Manifesto’ and launch a new campaign calling for a world where the rights of street children to a full, healthy and dignified life, as set out in the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child, are upheld.
When ever people come across me they laugh. Itseems like my mouth is zipped because they talk for us, I wish they could give us a chance to talk for ourselves.
Mbali, 15, Durban
The event
Teams will be welcomed in Durban by local schools, who have been part of the British Council’s Dreams and Teams programme. Alongside intercultural activities with the schoolchildren, the teams will receive football coaching from Coaching for Hope. They will receive training in advocacy and child rights and work with an internationally trained team of artists drawn together by Momentum Arts to tell their stories in creative ways which transcend language barriers. They will create an experience of street life which will be exhibited at the Durban Art Gallery and subsequently in the UK. The football tournament will take place at the Durban University of Technology.
Amos Trust initiated this project in response to the ground-breaking work of their South African partner Umthombo Street Children, an organisation primarily run by former street children. The event is being organised by a network of street children NGOs and voluntary groups with eight competing teams coming from South Africa, Brazil, India, Nicaragua, Ukraine, Philippines, UK and Tanzania, with former street children from Vietnam also sharing their experiences.
The Street Child World Cup demonstrates the tremendous potential of every single child, and especially street children, who are so often treated as less than human. I am proud that the first ever Street Child World Cup will take place in South Africa – and I urge all governments to guarantee the rights of this most marginalised group of their citizens to lives in which their promise is fulfilled.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The conference
The finals will coincide with the arrival of international dignitaries, policy makers and leading football figures. They will be there to gain an understanding of the street children’s experience and to hear from the partner organizations and from leading academic researchers. The participants will create a ‘Manifesto’, based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Following the event the materials developed with the street children, conference papers and ‘Manifesto’ will be translated, reproduced and disseminated.
I’ve played football as a teenager with the world watching me. The Street Child World Cup is a brilliant project which will help hundreds of thousands of teenagers who live on the streets by getting the world to listen to them and give them a fair chance.
Theo Walcott
After the event
Partner projects have committed to carry out comprehensive follow on support to ensure that the participating children are able to share the learning they have received with their peers.
The Street Child World Cup will continue to work with South African human rights partners and street child NGOs to monitor and contribute to the eradication of abuses against street children during the FIFA World Cup.
The Street Child Manifesto produced by the children at the event will be distributed and discussed by leading street child agencies throughout the world in the months following the event. It will then be launched at an event at no 11 Downing Street and form the basis of ongoing campaigning and advocacy work in each participating country.
The Football Association commends initiatives such as the Street Child World Championships which use the power of football to make a difference to people’s lives.
Lord David Triesman: The Football Association
If you would like to get involved:
When people see us by the streets, they say that we are the street boys. But when they see us playing soccer, they say that we are not the street boys. They say that we are people like them. They are people like us.
Andile, Durban
Further information:
Jenny Dawkins: Project Manager, Deloitte Street Child World Cup
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