The Impact of Chicago's Street Soccer USA Program

The Impact of Chicago's Street Soccer USA program

Story and photos by Suzanne Hanney

Standing on the Kelly High School football field after a Tuesday night street soccer game, Jarveay Harris can afford to look back. Six years ago, he was living in LaCasa Norte’s Solid Ground supportive housing program for homeless males age 18-21. He had dropped out of Curie Metropolitan, a Chicago public high school, because he felt he didn’t fit in.

Harris’s dad wasn’t around, and he had disagreements with his mom. She wanted him to get a job. But minimum wage was much lower then and, “I could see everyone making more money than me: drug dealers, IT people, startups.”

Then Otto Rodriguez, Chicago director of Street Soccer USA, stopped by and recruited him.

Before long, Harris had gone to street soccer tournaments in Philadelphia, Sacramento and North Carolina.

“That was my first time traveling anywhere,” Harris said. “[Street soccer] helped me see the world outside Chicago. After I got to see the world a bit, I wanted to get out on my own and have been traveling ever since.” In the past three years, he’s been to New York and Miami. Next year, he plans to visit Canada.

Harris worked at Pequod’s while at La Casa Norte and got his GED. He liked school when it was just him and the teacher. It was the big-school environment he hated. Then he went to Robert Morris College for a bachelor’s degree in business. He has his own apartment now, and a job. He does marketing and social media, focused on delivery of products that match messaging, most recently for Pride Month.

“It’s good pay. I like my job. Life’s going on.” He’s OK with the education detour. “Things happen for a reason.”

Harris continues with weekly street soccer, mostly for his health. “Every time, I talk to Otto. My little brother wants to play soccer and go to school for it. I have known these guys for six, seven years. I want to make sure everyone’s good.”

Street Soccer USA (SSUSA) is an alternative to the pay-to-play model of youth sports for kids age 6-18 living below the poverty line. Its programs are also for homeless families, adults, and people in recovery. Since its founding in 2004, SSUSA has introduced its program to 15,000 youth and adults in 14 cities across the nation. It is also the official partner of the Homeless World Cup, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and for the first time in the United States. Postponed since 2019 because of COVID, the 2023 Homeless World Cup will be July 8-15 at Hornet Stadium of California State University in Sacramento, which will also accommodate players from visiting nations around the globe.

Like SSUSA founders Lawrence and Rob Cann, Rodriguez played soccer in college, at North Park University in Chicago. He said he knew he wasn’t going to play professionally, but he wanted to continue his soccer journey. He considered a degree in sociology, but instead graduated in finance.

“I convinced myself I could do social work through sport, so I emailed Lawrence and started out as a volunteer.”

From La Casa Norte, he expanded a few other shelters. After five years as a volunteer and 10 as an employee, as well as marriage and two children, Rodriguez is now working with roughly 150 youth, primarily at Casa Central, La Posada Family Shelter and Mercy Home Tuesday through Friday. There are also Wednesday and Sunday night programs in which recent refugees participate

Street soccer’s differences from conventional soccer are what make it so beneficial to the kids it serves. First, street soccer is tighter. Three games play simultaneously Tuesday nights at the Kelly High School soccer field on the Southwest Side.

Harris on a Tuesday night at Kelly HS

Second, the game focuses more on collaboration than individual stardom, Rodriguez said.

“You have to play as a team and communicate with each other in order to score goals. There are rarely teams on a pitch that have a LeBron James or a Lionel Messi, because it’s so tight and the formation you make is a triangle. There is no individual talent. It’s all team-based. We teach our participants that. We need each other. We have to work on social skills, how we communicate with people. Do we treat them with respect? If we are mean to them, we won’t get our goals accomplished.”

The SSUSA website lists eight skills developed from street soccer: “show up, play with heart, look up, take the space, build your triangle, praise great play, play the plan, adjust the plan.” The intention is to provide a problem-solving framework that participants can apply to every situation they face in life. The organization’s independent research shows that 92 percent of participants improved in terms of self-efficacy, emotional self-regulation, ability to trust others, social network, and physical health.

Rodriguez said that a lot of his participants continue to play after their competitive days. One of his first graduates was homeless and went through the whole program. Now at 28, he is a teacher in middle school, he has bought his first home and he comes to play on Wednesday nights.

“You see it because it’s a community. They come together when they don’t really have it. Most of these kids are 16, 17, 18. Their attitude is, ‘I don’t know anyone. I hate the world because no one wants to give me anything.’ It’s getting them back into a routine. ‘You do matter, but all of us are working to get to this point.’ That’s what helps Jarveay, a structure, a base. If there is a problem, they can come to me and talk it out. ‘What’s the next step?’”

Another recent benefit from the program is that the Illinois Youth Soccer Association has offered street soccer youths official training for free, so that they can find jobs as referees.

Rodriguez has been to pretty much every Homeless World Cup since 2012. First, there was Mexico City in 2012, then Poznan, Poland, in 2013; Santiago, Chile, in 2014; Amsterdam in 2015; Glasgow, Scotland, in 2016; Oslo in 2017; Mexico City in 2018 and Cardiff, Wales, in 2019. He coached the U.S. men’s team in 2015 and the women’s team in 2012.

They round up playing Mexico, which had 3,000 fans, in the first match, on the Mexico City Zócalo.

The team from across the U.S. had never played together before. “OK, girls, let’s just have fun,’ I told them. We got smoked 23-0. People were laughing, but at the end of the day, we ended up in 8th place. To me, it’s that whole resilience.”

What is the vibe at the Homeless World Cup? And how does it contribute to getting someone out of homelessness and to creating a world without homelessness?

What is the vibe at the Homeless World Cup? And how does it contribute to getting someone out of homelessness and to creating a world without homelessness?

“The vibe is just happiness,” Rodriguez said. He doesn’t bring participants every year, but only when they have “gratitude and growth,” he said.

“We invite our guys who have accomplished the most, who have a certain set of skills that are good enough, but who also have gotten a good job, finished school, or whatever they have to do that has propelled them further in life, so that we can welcome them to this culture event. It’s essentially a free vacation. They play 45 minutes a day and then hang out for a week.”

Just as at Kelly High School, multiple games will be going on simultaneously in Sacramento. There is no admission charge, and spectators can get up close and personal on the field. Sponsorships help pay the way. The Carlos Slim Foundation, from the man whose family owns America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile telecom supplier, subsidized the World Cup in Mexico City. Michael Sheen, the Welsh actor who plays the angel Aziraphale in the Amazon Prime “Good Omens,” brought it to Cardiff.

Free admission is a way to bring more eyes to the games so that people realize, “'Oh, this is the Homeless World Cup, but they look just like me,'” Rodriguez said.

“People think ‘homeless people’ and they think of people sitting under viaducts. Yes, we want to advocate for them, too, but we want people to understand how to advocate for our program, that [they] can teach these kids what they do, show a kid who is struggling with alcoholism that there is a better way.”

After 20 years, the games seem to be achieving the goals sought by Mel Young, a Scottish entrepreneur who co-founded The Big Issue Scotland in 1993 and the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) in 1995. During an INSP conference, he was having a beer with Harald Schmied, who ran a street paper sold by homeless people in Graz, Austria. They were pondering how they could change the world. A conference of editors was nice, but how could they involve more people who had actually been homeless?

Football, they decided, created a universal language. The first Homeless World Cup was 18 months later in Graz, and it has been held yearly since, except for the COVID hiatus.

Young says on homelessworldcup.org that 4 out of 5 participants change their lives forever. They get off drugs and into housing.

Homelessness should not be permitted to exist, Young said. Watching the games also changes attendees’ perspective.

“Don’t think about the huge things you can do,” he said. “If we all do something small, we can change the world.”

How Street Papers And Street Soccer Go Together At The 2023 Homeless World Cup In Sacramento

by Tony Inglis

The Homeless World Cup returns July 8-15 for the first time since before COVID – and the first time ever in the United States – in Sacramento, CA. The Homeless World Cup and the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) have a shared history. Both were established by Mel Young, and street papers and soccer projects continue to collaborate. They give a renewed sense of purpose to marginalized people, homeless people and those in poverty.

The INSP celebrates the crossover between street soccer and street papers. Street papers in Argentina, Australia, South Korea, and Switzerland either have street soccer projects, or have the same parent organization. A street paper may be born out of a street soccer team and vice versa.

INSP caught up with the projects to talk about their work and impact.

ARGENTINA

The Argentinian street soccer team started as a sports workshop for vendors of the street paper Hecho en Bs. As. in 2003, before becoming its own NGO, Hecho Club Social, a few years later. Both still work closely together.

“It meant we could share the project with neighborhood [football] clubs, other NGOs, and people in public office working with the Urban League of Football for Social Inclusion,” says project director Sergio J. Rotman.

The project ran a one-day monthly tournament alongside workshops on work, health, housing, citizenship and gender. It branched out to other sports: running and field hockey. It now manages the national LGBT hockey team, where 30 trans women have found a space to play and fight for their rights.

One player is Pedro. “He had a child at a young age, so needed to work very hard to support her,” Rotman said. “He used to load and unload trucks, then he dedicated himself to sweeping streets, and later to study to become a physical trainer. He ignored bad influences that might have encouraged him to take easy money, and turned his life around.”

Pedro now helps coach players ahead of the Sacramento tournament. “Pedro is leading a group of great people looking for new opportunities and enjoying playing soccer,” says Rotman. “This is the real spirit of street soccer.”

AUSTRALIA

“Players come together at weekly training sessions to get fit and make friends, while receiving health education and support,” says Halkias. “Our coaches create a friendly and safe environment for people to connect with their community. For many players, this is a crucial first step to rebuilding their lives. It offers significant purpose in life and a sense of longing.”

Participants have positive feedback on the impact of the team. They cite improved health and fitness, better understanding of access to social services, and alcohol reduction.

Jimmy Maughan is a goalkeeper for the Street Socceroos. “Playing street soccer has really helped me improve my mental health, and [it] boosts my self-confidence.”

SOUTH KOREA

Photos courtesy of The Big Issue Korea (L) and Surprise (R).

The Big Issue South Korea established a street soccer program in 2010, around the time of the Homeless World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, where six street paper vendors participated.

The aim of the Korean project is to tackle homelessness and housing poverty, and to change perceptions regarding people experiencing these issues.

"In Korea, the problem of housing poverty is not viewed as a social structural problem, but only as an individual problem," says Jaehyung Chung, who works within the street soccer project. "Social interest in homelessness is very low. The story of the players who participated in the Homeless World Cup was an opportunity to gather social attention and supporters through the media. There's positive changes in the lives of players: gaining stable housing, restoring family relationships, going to college, or getting a job. It's clear that the tenacity gained through the training process, as well as the hospitality and support they experience in the tournament, is positive energy for them."

The Big Issue Korea had success working with various local welfare facilities and organizations throughout the project, like conducting a health soccer class program throughout national shelters and other homeless facilities.

Oh Hyun-suk is a Big Issue Korea vendor and a past participant on the soccer team. "Participating in the 2010 Rio de Janeiro Homeless World Cup, I flew for the first time ever," he says. "I was able to see the world through the Homeless World Cup. I'd given up on a lot of things, but I was able to get a sense of liveliness through positive communication by meeting people like me at the tournament. After the Homeless World Cup, I gained more confidence in selling magazines. I've never had a proper job. I've never been in front of people and hung out with them. I've enjoyed getting close to people through football. It was an opportunity to strengthen the will to move one step at a time in life."

SWITZERLAND

The Federal Office of Public Health of Switzerland states that "Poverty makes you sick" and "Sickness makes you poor." In 2003, the Swiss street paper Surprise launched the sports program “Strassenfussball” to reintegrate socially disadvantaged and marginalized people “into the playing field of life,” according to the magazine’s Caroline Walpen. “The annual participation of the Surprise National Team in the Homeless World Cup brings a special experience for our street soccer players. Street soccer is preventive, participatory, and supportive on national and international levels.”

For the last two years, Surprise has been promoting women’s street soccer, successfully establishing its own women’s team. A mixed team will travel to Sacramento.

“In Switzerland, there’s hardly any homeless people playing,” says Walpen. “However, we do reach out to other marginalized people. For example, individuals affected by unemployment, addiction problems, poverty, mental illness, refugee experiences, or other adversities. These people are typically socially disadvantaged.”

As with other nations where street papers and street soccer are intertwined (Surprise also has a street choir project), Switzerland has magazine vendors who play football too, like 64-year-old Heini Hassler.

“Ruedi, a friend of mine and fellow street paper vendor, introduced me to the Surprise Street Soccer team a few years ago,” he says. “It’s the challenge that motivates me: no matter how hard it gets, I never give up.”

Courtesy of the International Network of Street Papers