It Starts With Soccer
It Starts With Soccer is 100% volunteer-run organization based in Austin, Texas. Our goal is to help under-served children in Africa break out of the cycle of poverty and we achieve this by combining soccer with community outreach projects to promote lasting change.
In 2001, our founder, Doug Brown, began travelling to impoverished countries in Africa, to work as a medical volunteer. His days were spent providing medical care and healthcare education, while his evenings were spent playing soccer with the local children.
As always, with experience comes wisdom and over the years he began to develop a better understanding of the needs in the communities he was working in. Many of which were directly related to the community members’ healthcare problems, such as lack of access to clean water and formal education. It was through these experiences that he decided to broaden the scope of his assistance, and get to the root of the problem: Poverty.
Additionally, on the soccer field he had begun to put on tournaments for the local schools and was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from the communities. It became clear that soccer was an effective way to not only reach children, but also bring communities together as a whole. Armed with the knowledge that most children born into poverty will continue that cycle throughout their lives, and believing that a good education is the foundation to breaking out of that cycle, It Starts With Soccer, was formed. The idea was to work with children, and use soccer clinics as a way to promote the importance of getting a good education. Understanding that education is only one component of poverty, It Starts With Soccer was also created to help find solutions to the tangible needs of communities (i.e. access to clean water, school supplies, renewable energy, medical care).Since we began our work in 2011, one of the most illuminating lessons we’ve learned from the children we work with in Africa is that it is truly possible to be content in the worst of circumstances, if you focus on the positive. Often, the needs of the children we serve are simple…a loaf of bread to eat, a pencil and paper for school, antibiotics for illness, or a shirt without holes. Despite not having those needs met and living a life in abject poverty, they rarely complain. It’s their appreciation for life in the face of such adversity that inspires and motivates us to keep helping them in any way we can.
Programs
Sustainable School Farm & Agriculture Education Program
Sustainable School Farms and Agriculture Education Program - We build school farms (including greenhouses, goat corrals, water access) to rural schools in Zimbabwe and provide livestock (goats typically), and weekly in-person agriculture education to the students. The farms generate food for the schools and income for the schools, as well as teach the students how to make a living through farming.
Water
Water Projects - To have successful school farms, we provide schools with access to clean water, by drilling wells; installing solar pumps; running piping to the schools; installing spigots; and providing hoses. Clean water is necessary for sanitation, cooking, drinking, watering the gardens, and taking care of livestock.
Soccer
Soccer clinics are an essential part of our work in Africa, providing us a platform to educate children about life through sport, using the most popular sport in the world. The primary focus of our clinics is to provide the children with the tools to be successful in school and in their communities. We achieve this by relating soccer to real life situations, through exercises and drills in which we underline the importance of good decision making, developing individual skills and working together as a team. We also provide our participants with school supplies, including English and Math notebooks, rulers, pens and pencils to help ease the burden of school expenses on the children and their families. The average cost of a soccer clinic for 40-50 children is $200.
Solar Panels & Pumps
Solar panels are an important and relatively inexpensive source of renewable energy, that can make a big difference in rural African communities. These communities often do not have access to electricity and the areas that do have access to electricity experience frequent power outages. Solar panels not only provide power for lighting, charging, and operating electronics and appliances, but they also can power pumps at boreholes to help drive water over long distances. Solar pumps are essentially water pumps that are powered by solar panels. They pull water from boreholes and push it through pipes into reserve water tanks and to spigots on school grounds. Boreholes can be located long distances from schools, leading to poor sanitation, poor nutrition, and difficulty maintaining school farms. We provide solar pumps to help insure a constant flow of clean water to the schools we work with.
Construction
We primarily build school farms, but we have built several sports courts, school buildings, orphanage buildings, and medical clinic buildings.
Volunteering + Events
Working in Africa
We have volunteers that choose to raise money for a project through our organization, then go to Africa and implement that project with our assistance.