Thoughts About Football & Social Impact.
Football has the power to change lives, as proven by the South Bronx United.
The most controversial World Cup to date is coming up next November and we are already seeing the influence the tournament has had on culture everywhere.
From brands and platforms that have nothing to do with the game releasing jersey collections, to internet stars rebranding as spokespeople for their national team, everybody wants a piece of the cake.
As football is one of the main drivers in my research on society and culture, I have been working tirelessly to build some interesting stories that go beyond what happens on the pitch on match day to focus on the social power of the game.
Last week Rivista 11 — an Italian sports magazine I frequently contribute to — released their latest issue, entirely dedicated to talent and grassroots.
I got to interview the amazing people behind South Bronx United, an organization supporting youth from marginalized communities and immigrant backgrounds through their whole academic journey.
Given that the article was eventually translated and printed in Italian, and not many people in my circle got to read it, I thought it would be a good idea to send out its original version with my newsletter this week.
Remember: football is for all ⚽️!
It is fairly common knowledge that football is one of the strongest — if not the strongest — social aggregators to ever exist.
The cross-cultural, cross-generation, and truly borderless essence of this centennial discipline, in all its iterations, has created endless opportunities for interaction, bonding, and mutual support throughout the world.
Its inexpensive and easy characteristics turned the beautiful game into an international language with the power to defeat barriers of all kinds while bringing people together emotionally. Football instills resilience in anybody who comes across a ball.
Football is inspirational. Whether it’s due to the potential stardom it can individually supply when reaching success or the emotional strength it equips fans across the world with, no other sport shares the same captivating force.
For this reason, football has become an efficient tool for education, integration, and the poster child of gender equality.
Over the past two decades, hoards of non-profit organizations centered around this unifying activity have popped up internationally, becoming a point of reference for local communities and global practices alike.
Particularly in underserved precincts and countries where most of the population is condemned to live under the poverty line due to malfunctioning government policies and battered pasts, football has been used as a tool to keep children and at-risk youth off the streets, away from criminal futures and, at times, even worse outcomes such as death.
While the structured youth academies of professional clubs focus on fostering talent to produce the next Lionel Messi encouraged by the cash that comes with such discovery, football charities provide strategic developmental programs that support children’s (and not only) growth through educational courses, extracurricular activities, and mental health resources.
In the case of the South Bronx United — a non-profit organization based in the poorest borough of New York City where most of the residents suffer from violent backgrounds, complicated cases, and struggle to make ends meet — participants are also offered immigration support and academic assistance from pre-k to college application.
Co-founded in 2009 by Andrew So — a mathematics teacher and special education administrator practicing in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx — as a reaction to the lack of local recreational opportunities, the South Bronx United is a donor-supported organization using football as a tool for social change with “the goal to build character, teamwork and leadership”.
Working with youth encompassing kindergarten and college graduates, SBU offers eight programs all focusing on different aspects of education and sport.
The SBU Academy offers a pathway from middle school to high school to college to professional work for local children primarily immigrant and first-generation youth. It combines competitive travel soccer with academic enrichment, tutoring, and college prep while helping students with immigration legal services.
The Global Youth League offers approximately 150 high school girls and boys the opportunity to compete in a Saturday football league, along with access to immigration screenings, social work support, and weekly college access sessions.
The Recreational Soccer Program is open to all children regardless of experience. Participants aged 4-15 attend Saturday sessions and games at three different parks in the neighborhood. Additionally, they are offered after-school sessions and special events like the Annual Health and Wellness Day Fair and Annual Literacy Day.
The College Success Program works to ensure college graduation for all SBU Academy student-athletes, while their Community School Project collaborates with multiple surrounding elementary and middle schools to deliver afternoon football programming with an additional component (such as health and nutrition education or girls’ leadership development.)
Through the Pre-Academy, kids in grades 3-5 can compete on travel soccer teams and train twice a week for weekend games, while also participating in educational workshops for families. This program encourages participants to transition into the SBU Academy at the beginning of 6th grade.
The South Bronx United additionally offers a six-week long, half-day summer camp for elementary school children. In this program, kids have the opportunity to learn football and play in a fun, safe, and supportive environment. It is open to everybody no matter their involvement in the organization.
Lastly, the organization is recognized by the Office of Legal Access programs at the United States Department of Justice to provide immigration legal services with accredited representatives. Immigration relief eligibility screenings are available to youth and family members who participate in SBU programs.
Since its inception, the organization has processed 158 cases, closing 41 in 2021 alone. Thanks to this crucial service and the continuous efforts carried out by the staff and volunteers, 31 of their students have received legal permanent residency since its foundation – including one particularly entangled suit involving a student-athlete from Ivory Coast who went from speaking no English to being awarded a full scholarship to The City University of New York and acquiring permanent legal residence after his father was tragically deported.
Currently, the South Bronx United serves around 1.400 youth annually, but it wasn’t always like this. It started with only two boys’ teams patched together from two neighboring schools on a cold day in February 2009. “It rained the day before our first session so the corner of the baseball field we had chosen for the training was unusable squishy mud,” says Andrew So, yet, despite the initial challenges, the hunger to play football in a safe environment was so strong, the need for expansion was clear and swift.
Additionally, these kids faced all kinds of different hurdles in the various aspects of their lives, from academic outcomes and college acceptance to immigration status. As a result, Andrew, his wife — who is also his co-founder — and their crew of coaches began building and working towards creating more opportunities while actively reaching out to local communities and getting them involved in the organization.
Speaking with Joshua Guerra, the Communications and Community Outreach Manager, makes it clear that the South Bronx United lives and breathes football, however, each and everyone involved in its operations is fully invested in the personal growth of their students and is on a mission to provide a bright future to the youth and families that gravitate around them.
Hearing football was the sport of choice for such a mission in a city like New York where basketball is historically predominant is curious but not bizarre as the thread stringing SBU together and the matrix pushing them forward is a thorough survey of the surrounding environment and a direct response to the needs of the neighborhood — which is principally inhabited by families coming from the global south and other parts of the world where basketball is a secondary interest.
But while the game stays at the forefront of the mind and is the magnet attracting kids from diverse cultural backgrounds, academic success is a priority for the South Bronx United.
The staggering graduation rates (100% of their student-athletes finish high school and 94% are accepted into college) of the youth in their programs is what sent the academy to Berlin to retrieve the Laureus Sport for Good award in 2020.
“It was an incredible joy to see the organization recognized by Laureus. To see SBU on stage next to guys you see on FIFA,” said Guerra when asked about the highlights of working with such an establishment, but again, the small daily wins are what matter the most.
Being able to guide children through adolescence and give them the foundation to become remarkable adults while living in such a difficult backdrop is what makes the South Bronx United stand out amongst others.
Year after year, they keep growing and expanding to serve more and more members, which is phenomenal but also the cause of some challenges like capacity and training space.
But Andrew So and his team are not easily defeated; this year the organization will be moving into their first real home: the SBU Clubhouse — a 900 square meter establishment just one block from the world-famous Yankee Stadium. The building will include a mini indoor play area and, a classroom to give youth a safe space to hang out, complete homework, and attend college prep workshops, with the ultimate goal to increasingly grow bigger and touch more families who need these types of services.
The story of the South Bronx United is just one out of the million international nonprofit organizations working towards providing a better future for youth in underserved communities and countries.
In the USA alone, there are 1.5 million officially registered associations offering support across different social causes. Many other unofficial, self-organized ones are bred by the personal need of their founders to do something for their neighborhood.
For example, The Urban Football League was founded in Chicago in 2020 by Maxwell Murray as a platform to reclaim football and change the narration about the sport in the USA, which has always been predominantly white. This independent grassroots organization focuses on giving Black and Brown humans a space to learn, grow, and experience community around the sport. They aim to offer safe spaces to pick up games around the city and create opportunities to destigmatize football amongst the African American community by offering affordable youth leagues in the disenfranchised neighborhoods of Chicago.
On this side of the pond, on more autochthonous grounds but in seemingly less progressive cities, we also have our fair share of organizations using football as a tool for social impact and integration.
In Padova (Italy), the anti-racist association Quadrato Meticcio uses football as a way to help refugees from Sub-Saharan countries settle in the new continent and find a supportive community while creating an accessible environment for everyone no matter their sex, age, or ethnicity.
Moving down south, Mediterraneo Antirazzista has been active in the city of Palermo (Sicily) to promote an intercultural vision of our society and break the barriers of racism and decay in a municipality highly affected by immigration, poverty, and unemployment.
In their action, Mediterraneo Antirazzista has also taken a hands-on urban approach by refurbishing a local hot spot: Il Campo di Bocce—a public pitch in the back of the Ballarò market known for intense nighttime games, which serves as an afternoon meeting point for the local teens.
These organizations play a major role in the personal growth of the communities they interact with, reclaiming space for children to play, engage, and have fun while learning self-discipline.
In Italy, these charitable initiatives have brewed a couple of superstars, most notably Atalanta’s forward Moustapha Cissé, proving once again that football indeed does have the power to change lives.
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