Street Soccer Canada preparing for World Cup

Street Soccer Canada is the organization that has taken the beautiful game to a beautiful place; in the invitation to just kick a ball around, or join a game, or join in and watch, Street Soccer Canada is helping homeless people rediscover the joy of the game, and eventually, a way back to a better life.

“It’s grown from 2004 in a van, to now we’re in 12 cities across Canada”

Paul Gregory is the founder of Street Soccer Canada. He said he immediately saw the benefit, “people were engaged like I hadn’t seen in quite a while so we’d have a ball and all of a sudden there’d be 12 people playing soccer on a little patch of grass outside a shelter”

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Gregory says he has witnessed so many transformations now he’s beginning to lose track. He says he sees people realize they can do something again, “it gives them an opportunity to reinvent themselves, to reinvent what they once were, he says, “obviously they’ve had success in the past, but it’s hard to remember those in some of the isolating effects of homelessness.”

Right now, teams across Canada are preparing for the national championship in Hamilton, Ontario on July 18th and 19th. At this event the team for the Homeless World Cup will be chosen to compete in Amsterdam in September.

 “anyone can become homeless, and any homeless person can make a comeback”

The coach of the team has lived the experience from top to bottom. Bill, a former professional soccer player. who went to the 1986 World Cup with Team Canada, lost everything. Years of an addiction to painkillers took their toll and he ended up on the street. In 2007 he got involved with Street Soccer Canada and has now become one of the organization’s leaders on the world stage.

As it says of Bill on their website: “he’s a living example that anyone can become homeless, and that any homeless person can make a comeback.

Ed from Uganda is another example.  An immigrant who was living the Canadian dream with a great job and wonderful family, he found himself spiralling into a deep depression following his mother’s death.  Post traumatic shock developed and some of the horrors he’d witnessed in Uganda left him on the street unable to cope.

He said playing soccer again brought him back to some of the happiest moments in his life growing up, and from that his life has been transformed. He helps others in the same condition now by refereeing the games, and managing the laundry service the organization started to provide flexible part-time work for people in the shelters.

For Paul Gregory it is simple: “I think recreation has been lost in terms of its power within the shelter system and it’s not really seen as integral or a holistic, part of people’s wellness and well being and I think that’s a missing piece, and that’s what we’re trying to provide by doing some of this stuff. So the next step, some of those next steps whether housing or employment, they become just reasonable things to talk about after you’ve played a hard game of soccer, and you’re sitting on the curb you can say “so what’s going on with you?”