São Paulo – The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, and Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy held the event “Futebol para o Desenvolvimento” [Soccer for the Development] this Monday (17) morning in Rio de Janeiro. The encounter (pictured above) brought togethers kids from poor neighborhoods and soccer legends to present projects of education and empowerment for the youth through sport.
Brazilian former players and coaches Evaristo de Macedo (who once was Qatar’s coach), Jorge Luis Andrade, and Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic were some of the guests. The programme also featured play activities at the field of Flamengo, South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, with the sport as a connecting thread to inspire kids in poor neighborhoods of the city such as Vidigal favela, Cidade de Deus, and Campo Grande.
Approximately 40 boys and girls participated in the event, which announced two projects on sport and development. The program Generation Amazing, an initiative created in 2010 by Qatar, during its bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, is a project that uses the power of sport to positively impact kids and create sustainable social development in selected neighborhoods.
“This will be one of Qatar’s main social projects around the world until the 2022 Cup,” said UNODC Brazil coordinator Nivio Nascimento. The soccer program has already benefited more than 250,000 people in seven countries of the Middle East and Asia: Qatar, Nepal, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Philippines and India. The goal is to reach 1 million kids by 2022.
The second project is a global youth crime prevention program called “Vamos nessa,” which is based on the power of the sport as a tool in peace promotion. The strategy was launched by UNODC in 2016 to help implement the Doha Declaration. The project holds sport activities to foster resilience in vulnerable kids, aiming to strengthen life skills in order to decrease risk factors while increasing protection against crime, violence, and drug abuse.
Since 2016, approximately 1,200 boys and girls from 13 to 17 years old from Rio de Janeiro and Brasília were benefited by the initiative, which trained 114 coaches and teachers to implement the method in their sports environment.
Brazil was a global pioneer in the implementation of the training sessions of the program “Vamos nessa,” which is financially supported by Qatar and is now present in more than ten countries, such as South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine, Peru, Colombia, Dominican Republic, and Ghana. “Brazil and Qatar have a history in the sport. Many Brazilians were players and coaches there,” said Nascimento. According to him, events such as this are part of UN and Qatar project to foster social development through large sports events, bringing about empowerment in marginalized communities, thus preventing violence.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda