My Story: Using Soccer to Teach Life Skills in Developing Countries ...

Brian travels the world and works with local NGOs to teach their coaches and players how to better use football for social development.

In the United States, sports are mostly for recreation and entertainment. They keep us healthy and also teach us basic lessons on teamwork, leadership, and fair play. But in many developing countries sport has a much greater value: education. More specifically, sports are being used to teach important life skills such as female empowerment, health & wellness (including HIV/AIDS behavioral change), conflict resolution, social inclusion, and financial literacy. NGOs (non-government organizations) exist worldwide and many of them use sports as a vehicle for social change.

I have the luxury of working with one such group, Coaches Across Continents. My full-time job is to travel the world (9+ months a year) working with local NGOs to teach their coaches and players how to better use football (soccer) for social development. In short, I get paid to travel the world and play football.

Former child soldiers in Pader, Uganda.

When I first volunteered in 2010 I?ll admit that I was a bit of a skeptic. How can playing football change behaviors and enact meaningful change in communities? The answer is quite simple. Sports are fun. People flock to play sports and are thoroughly engaged, sometimes not even realizing the lessons they are learning. At Coaches Across Continents, our award-winning curriculum focuses on always using a football. Our exercises must also involve laughter, even with our more serious topics of HIV/AIDS and conflict resolution. It is this element of fun that exists in sport which enables learning to happen.

Our football-based games create a specific environment where learning can occur. In our conflict resolution games, we create games that are designed to cause conflict and monitor the problem solving solutions that come out of them. In our female empowerment lessons we use games that highlight why it is essential that women play sports and foster respect between the genders. And in our HIV/AIDS games, we teach very serious behavioral lessons with footballs, laughter, and smiles to a populace who is still being ravaged by the disease. When our local partner coaches and players are exposed to this curriculum which all occurs on the field with a football, they cannot help but to learn and have fun which is essential for behavioral change.

Liberian amputees playing football.

Evidence of the success and power of sports are easy to find. In Kigoma, Tanzania there is a girl?s soccer league where just four years ago it was a struggle to get any girls to participate because of cultural traditions. In Monrovia, Liberia the African Champion National Amputee team is heading to this summer?s World Cup in Russia ? restoring a sense of belonging to a group of young men who lost limbs to landmines and civil war. And in Northern Uganda former child soldiers from Joseph Kony?s LRA are becoming life skills teachers using football to reintegrate into a society that is still healing from the atrocities that they themselves were forced to commit.

I have been lucky enough to work with our partner programs at all of these locations and see first-hand the power of football. My job is not a great job because of the travel or that I get to wear shorts and a t-shirt to my outside office every day. My job is terrific because I see the change occurring through sports. ?Brian Suskiewicz

The power of football in Tanzania.

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