>>> World Cup Willy <<<

I’ve spent many hours this weeks around Mel Young, photographing him, running erands for his team, but not any time to do more than say “hello”. This has scuppered my chances of talking to him in depth about him and The Homeless World Cup, so I’ve compiled a little bit of information from around the internet to give you an insight.

Mel, founder of The Big Issue in Scotland, set up The Homeless World Cup Foundation in 2001 with Harald Schmied, editor of a Austrian street paper. His vision was to unite homeless people through a simple, common language. 18 months after first talking about the issue, Mel and Harald held the first Homeless World Cup in Graz, Austria, with just 18 teams, but outstanding results and lasting impact on the participants’ lives. Based on that success, they rolled out the project in successive years across the world with more than 64 nations taking.

So, Mel’s vision is to start to make a dent in the one billion homeless people in the world, through football. This can only be done in small steps, but through The Homeless World Cup Foundation, their football programmes around the world and the annual competition, the participants can start to take responsibility for their futures and changing the face of homelessness. This has already proven to be working, as more than 70% of participants come move on from The Homeless World Cup into new lives and 94% say the event has had a positive impact on their lives.

All quite simple and effective and, as this years’ t-shirts say, a ball can change the world!

Info taken from Wikipedia and The Homeless World Cup website.

Photo courtesy of www.theskinny.co.uk